January 11, 2017

Acting NCI director Lowy to present HPV research lecture

Douglas R. Lowy, acting director of the National Cancer Institute, will deliver the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center George Daniel Brooks Lecture at Vanderbilt University Medical Center on Tuesday, Jan. 24, at 11 a.m. in Light Hall, Room 208. The title of the presentation is “Preventing HPV-associated Cancers: Short-term and Long-term Approaches.”

Douglas Lowy, M.D.
Douglas Lowy, M.D.

Douglas R. Lowy, acting director of the National Cancer Institute, will deliver the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center George Daniel Brooks Lecture at Vanderbilt University Medical Center on Tuesday, Jan. 24, at 11 a.m. in Light Hall, Room 208. The title of the presentation is “Preventing HPV-associated Cancers: Short-term and Long-term Approaches.”

Lowy is chief of the intramural Laboratory of Cellular Oncology in the Center for Cancer Research at the NCI and specializes in research on papillomaviruses and the regulation of normal and neoplastic growth. He and research collaborator John Schiller have co-authored more than 100 papers over the past 25 years. Their laboratory was involved in the initial development, characterization and clinical testing of the preventive virus-like particle-based human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines that have been approved by the FDA and many other countries.

It is for this body of work that Lowy and Schiller received the 2007 Federal Employee of the Year Award from the Partnership for Public Service, the 2007 Dorothy P. Landon-American Association for Cancer Research Prize for Translational Cancer Research, the Sabin Gold Medal in 2011, and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Obama in 2014.

Lowy also received the 2007 Medal of Honor for basic research from the American Cancer Society. He is listed by the Institute for Scientific Information as one of the most highly cited authors in microbiology, and he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine of the NAS.