Nobel Prize-Winning Cancer Researcher to Deliver Keynote Address at 2024 SABCS®

For nearly half a century, internationally renowned cancer scientists have shared their insights at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium^®. That tradition will continue during the 2024 SABCS^® with a special keynote address by Nobel Prize winner William G. Kaelin, Jr., MD.

Dr. Kaelin, a pioneering cancer biologist who was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, will present (Re)emerging Principles for Controlling Cancer with Drugs, at 8:35 a.m. CT on Wednesday, December 11, in Hall 1 at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center.

The address will be part of a robust morning of programming in the main hall, which will include welcome remarks from SABCS^® Co-Directors Virginia G. Kaklamani, MD, and Carlos L. Arteaga, MD; the presentation of highly anticipated clinical trial results during the first General Session; and the 2024 William L. McGuire Memorial Lecture.

“We are grateful to Dr. Kaelin for coming to SABCS^®,” Dr. Arteaga said. “His lecture will be a great way of jump-starting what will be an outstanding symposium.”

Dr. Kaelin; Peter J. Ratcliffe, FRS; and Gregg L. Semenza, MD, PhD, were honored by the Nobel Assembly for their discoveries of how cells can sense and adapt to changing oxygen availability. During the 1990s, they identified the molecular machinery that regulates the activity of genes in response to varying oxygen levels. These discoveries paved the way for new strategies to combat cancer, anemia, and other diseases.

Dr. Kaelin is the Sidney Farber Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and a Fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Academy. Dr. Kaelin also served on the National Cancer Institute Board of Scientific Advisors, the AACR Board of Trustees, and the IOM National Cancer Policy Board. Among his extensive accolades are the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Memorial Award from the AACR and the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Dr. Kaelin’s research is focused on understanding how, mechanistically, cancer is caused when mutations affecting tumor-suppressor genes occur. He hopes to lay the foundation for new cancer therapies based on the biochemical functions of tumor-suppressor proteins. His work on the VHL protein helped lead to the successful clinical test of VEGF inhibitors and the first HIF2 inhibitor to treat kidney cancer.