2010 Prize: Peter K. Vogt, Ph.D.
Keynote Speaker: John Lechleiter, Ph.D., Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Eli Lilly and Company
Professor, Department of Molecular and Experimental Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute, Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, and the American Academy of Microbiology
The Szent-Györgyi Prize Selection Committee recognizes Peter K. Vogt, Ph.D., for his groundbreaking discovery of cancer-causing genes, which launched a new era for cancer research.
Dr. Vogt’s research, which began on a humble chicken virus in the early 1960s, has profoundly changed biology and medicine. His discovery of src, the first cancer-causing gene, or oncogene, made seminal contributions to our present understanding of the role of oncogenes, proto-oncogenes and many other critical molecular mechanisms of cancer. Today, Dr. Vogt continues to be a leader in multiple aspects of cancer research, including initiatives that use some of the most important oncogenes as therapeutic targets-initiatives that are bringing renewed hope to cancer patients.
Dr. Peter Vogt’s revolutionary research on src has led to the discovery of additional oncogenes, including myc, jun, and PI 3-kinase, that play a key role in human cancer and have become household names in the world of cellular signaling research. His current work on cancer-specific mutations in p110, the catalytic subunit of PI 3-kinase, has demonstrated that these mutations confer oncogenic activity on the protein, making them highly specific cancer targets.
Pursuing these targets, Dr. Vogt is now generating small molecule inhibitors that can interfere with their role in cancer causation. Dr. Vogt’s iconic career may have begun with oncogene discovery but it has expanded in scope and now includes translational studies aimed at developing novel therapeutic approaches for cancer patients.
Currently, Dr. Vogt is a Professor in the Department of Molecular and Experimental Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.
He received his Ph.D. from the University of Tübingen, Germany, and trained as a virologist at the Max Planck Institute of Virology in Germany and at the University of California in Berkeley. “Dr. Vogt’s discovery of src, the first cancer causing gene, or oncogene, made seminal contributions to our present understanding of the role of oncogenes, proto-oncogenes and many other critical molecular mechanisms of cancer.”
