Abstract
The ETA, the host society, announced two awards on Monday, September 13. Professor Massimo Santoro of the University Federico II, Naples, Italy, was the recipient of the 2010 ETA Merck-Serono Prize Lecture. His talk, “The RET Gene in Thyroid Cancer” was followed by a second ETA award. Professor Martin J. Schlumberger of the Institut Gustave Roussy and University Paris Sud, France received the ETA Genzyme Prize for excellence in thyroid cancer research. A focus of his award lecture, “Treatment of Metastatic Differentiated Thyroid Cancer: Pitfalls and Recent Progress,” was the role of radioactive iodine in the management of these disorders. The following day, Professor Denise P. Carvalho of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro was announced as the winner of the Latin American Thyroid Society Prize 2010. She spoke on “Understanding Cellular Mechanisms of Thyroid Dysfunction.” On Wednesday Dr. Electron Kebebew of the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, received the ATA's 2010 Van Meter Award.* His lecture was on “Familial Nonmedullary Thyroid Cancer: Clinical and Genetic Studies.” On the final morning of the meeting, Professor Takashi Akamizu of the Translational Research Center, Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, was awarded the AOTA Nagataki-Fuji Prize. His presentation title was “Pathogenesis and Pathophysiology of Graves' Disease.”
At the same meeting, the winners of the award for outstanding Basic and Clinical papers for the July 2008 through December 2009 issues of Thyroid were announced. Four papers in each category were nominated by an eight-member committee of Thyroid Editors and members of its Editorial Board chaired by Professor Peter A. Kopp. Final selections were made by the Editorial Board and Editors. “A human monoclonal autoantibody to the thyrotropin receptor with thyroid-stimulating blocking activity” in the July 2008 issue of Thyroid by Jane Sanders et al. (1) was selected as the outstanding Basic paper. Other nominations in this category, listed in alphabetical order, were papers by Inaba et al. (2), Liu and Xing (3), and Tuttle et al. (4). In the Clinical category “Recurrence after treatment of micropapillary thyroid cancer” in the October 2009 issue of Thyroid by Ross et al. (5) was selected as the outstanding paper. Other nominations for the outstanding Clinical paper were reports by Loh et al. (6), Rivera et al. (7), and Williams et al. (8).
An important category of the awards made at the Fourteenth International Thyroid Congress were the Young Investigator Awards. The sister societies AOTA, ATA, ETA, and LATS awarded eight Young Investigator Awards of €1000 each to investigators below the age of 40 years for their oral and poster presentations. Awards were made to Kuk Young Na of the Republic of Korea for “The effectiveness of 134-I PET/CT and FDG-PET/CT in patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma with negative I-131 scan and elevated serum thyroglobulin,” Feng Ye of China for “Lentevirus-mediated CD40 gene silencing attenuates disease severity in animal model of Graves's disease,” Kirk Jensen of the United States for “Anoikis in thyroid cancer cells,” Carmelo Nucera of the United States for “PLX4720 inhibits cell proliferation and migration/invasion in human thyroid cancer cells, and inhibits tumor growth and metastasis in an orthotopic mouse model of anaplastic thyroid cancer harboring B-RAFV600E,” Leticia Aragao Santiago of Brazil for “The Δ337T mutation of the TRB causes alterations on glucose hepatic metabolism,” Alex Yamashita of Brazil on “Cross-talk between notch and MAPK signaling during RET/PTC3 and BRAFT1799A oncogene activation,” Francesco Antonica of Belgium on “Thyroidogenesis in vitro: MECS as system model to recapitulate thyroid organogenesis in a petri dish,” and Soren Fast of Denmark on “Recombinant human thyrotropin stimulated radioiodine therapy of nodular goiter allows major reduction of the radiation burden with retained efficacy.” Thyroid congratulates the winners.
In addition to awards made at ITCs, each of its sister societies make their own awards during the ITC year and in the intervening years. From time to time Thyroid publishes commentary and reviews by winners of these awards. In this issue, Dr. Paul G. Walfish, winner of the 2009 John B. Stanbury Thyroid Pathophysiology Medal of the ATA, writes on “Thyroid Pathophysiology: Reflections on Physician–Scientist Careers in Thyroidology.”
Footnotes
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The 2010 ATA Van Meter Award is supported by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Publishers.