Washington, DC – Susan G. Komen for the Cure® has appointed V. Craig Jordan, OBE, PhD, DSc, FMedSci, to its Scientific Advisory Council. Jordan, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, is the scientific director and vice chairman of the department of oncology at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University Medical Center.
According to Komen, appointment to the Komen Scientific Advisory Council is reserved for those who have a distinguished record of leadership and commitment to breast cancer research, as well as innovative contributions to breast cancer advancements. Those who are appointed as Council members "will serve as distinguished scholars advising and providing expertise to Susan G. Komen for the Cure in peer review, scientific research, sponsored programs, program development and review, and public policy."
"I am delighted to be selected as a member of the Komen Scientific Advisory Council," says Jordan. "This is an organization with impact throughout the world, so accepting this responsibility is wonderful."
Council members serve for renewable, two-year terms during which they will be expected to commit approximately 100 to 120 hours each year to Council activities. As a full council member, Jordan will be awarded a $250,000 Komen research grant annually for the duration of his term on the Advisory Council. This grant must be used to study critical questions in breast cancer and will require an annual project description and annual progress and financial reports.
"The flexible funds will be invested in the training of a new generation of medical scientists who will translate ideas into lives saved," Jordan says.
Jordan is an internationally recognized breast cancer scientist whose research focuses on the response of breast cancer cells to preventive and treatment agents. A pharmacologist, Jordan is recognized by many as the "father" the anti-cancer drug tamoxifen, a drug that blocks estrogen from fueling some breast cancers. Millions of women around the world continue to be treated with tamoxifen or take it to reduce the risk of developing breast cancer.
Susan G. Komen for the Cure is the world's largest grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists. It was established in 1982 with the goal of ending breast cancer, and has since become the global leader of the breast cancer movement, having invested nearly $1.5 billion into research, education and health services.
Jordan's distinguished list of national and international awards includes the 2008 ASCO David A. Karnofsky Memorial Award for advances that have changed the way doctors treat breast cancer patients. Also in 2008, Jordan became one of five scholars from around the world to receive an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Society of Medicine at the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) in London. The award is one of the highest honors in British medicine.
Jordan also received the 2007 University of Massachusetts Medical School/Worcester Foundation Gregory Pincus Memorial Award and Medal. In 2006, he was honored with ASCO's American Cancer Society Award for Chemoprevention. Other awards include the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation's 2003 Charles F. Kettering Prize for the most outstanding contribution to cancer treatment, the American Cancer Society's 2002 Medal of Honor for basic research, the 2001 Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cancer Research and the first Brinker International Breast Cancer Award for Basic Science from the Susan G. Komen Foundation in 1992. In 2002, Queen Elizabeth II named him an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to international breast cancer research.
In addition, Jordan has been honored by the American Association for Cancer Research, in 1989 and 2002, the British Pharmacological Society, the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, the Royal Society of Chemistry and many other professional groups and institutions around the world. He also received the Pennsylvania Breast Cancer Coalition's 2001 Pink Ribbon Award for outstanding individuals dedicated to finding a cure for breast cancer.
Jordan joined Lombardi from Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia where he served as vice president and scientific director for the medical sciences and held the Alfred G. Knudson Jr., MD, PhD, Chair in Cancer Research.
Prior to joining Fox Chase, Jordan was the Diana, Princess of Wales Professor of Cancer Research, professor of cancer pharmacology and director of the Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Research Program at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern University. He was also professor of molecular pharmacology and biological chemistry and professor of medicine at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine.
Born in Texas to an English mother and American father, he grew up in rural England and earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees in pharmacology at the University of Leeds, completing his PhD in 1972. Although appointed to the faculty at Leeds, Jordan first came to the United States for postdoctoral training. He was a research associate and then a visiting scientist at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology in Shrewsbury, Mass., from 1972 to 1974.
After teaching at Leeds until 1979, he held a one-year appointment to establish the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at the University of Berne in Switzerland and then joined the University of Wisconsin faculty in 1980. For his seminal contributions to the pharmacology of non-steroidal anti-estrogens, Leeds awarded him a doctor of science degree in 1985 and he became a full professor of human oncology and pharmacology at Wisconsin the same year. His roles at Wisconsin included directing the University of Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center Breast Cancer Program until he joined the Northwestern faculty in 1993.
About Susan G. Komen for the Cure®
Nancy G. Brinker promised her dying sister, Susan G. Komen, she would do everything in her power to end breast cancer forever. In 1982, that promise became Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which is now the world's largest breast cancer organization and the largest source of nonprofit funds dedicated to the fight against breast cancer with nearly $1.5 billion invested to date. For more information about Susan G. Komen for the Cure, breast health or breast cancer, visit www.komen.org or call 1-877 GO KOMEN.
About Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center
The Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of Georgetown University Medical Center and Georgetown University Hospital, seeks to improve the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cancer through innovative basic and clinical research, patient care, community education and outreach, and the training of cancer specialists of the future. Lombardi is one of only 41 comprehensive cancer centers in the nation, as designated by the National Cancer Institute, and the only one in the Washington, DC, area. For more information, go to http://lombardi.georgetown.edu.
About Georgetown University Medical Center
Georgetown University Medical Center is an internationally recognized academic medical center with a three-part mission of research, teaching and patient care (through MedStar Health). GUMC's mission is carried out with a strong emphasis on public service and a dedication to the Catholic, Jesuit principle of cura personalis -- or "care of the whole person." The Medical Center includes the School of Medicine and the School of Nursing and Health Studies, both nationally ranked, the world-renowned Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Biomedical Graduate Research Organization (BGRO), home to 60 percent of the university's sponsored research funding.