Arul M. Chinnaiyan, MD, PhD, FASCP, received the 2009 ASCP Philip Levine Award for Outstanding Research at the October 2009 ASCP Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL. The award recognizes a researcher who has made a significant contribution to molecular pathology, immunohematology, or immunopathology.
Dr. Chinnaiyan is the S.P. Hicks Endowed Professor of Pathology and Professor of Pathology and Urology at the University of Michigan (UM) Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI. He is also a member of the Comprehensive Cancer Center and Bioinformatics Program there. In 2007, he was named director of a new initiative at UM called the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology, the goal of which is to develop new molecular tests and therapeutics for human disease with a primary focus on cancer. Dr. Chinnaiyan is a board-certified clinical pathologist and currently serves as Director of the Division of Pathology Research Informatics.
Dr. Chinnaiyan’s laboratory has focused on functional genomic, proteomic and bioinformatics approaches to study cancer for the purposes of understanding cancer biology as well as to discover clinical biomarkers. He and his collaborators have characterized a number of biomarkers of prostate cancer, including AMACR, EZH2, hepsin and sarcosine. AMACR is being used clinically across the country in the assessment of cancer in prostate needle biopsies.
The landmark discovery from Dr. Chinnaiyan’s laboratory is TMPRSS2-ETS gene fusions prostate cancer. TMPRSS2-ETS gene fusions are specific markers of prostate cancer, and presumably function as rational targets for this disease. This finding potentially redefines the molecular basis of prostate cancer as well as other common epithelial cancers. The team involved with these studies was awarded the 2007 American Association for Cancer Research Team Science Award. His laboratory is looking for ways to target this gene fusion and discover similar gene fusions in other common epithelial tumors such as those derived from the breast, lung, and colon. His laboratory also developed the popular cancer profiling bioinformatics resource called Oncomine (www.oncomine.org), which is freely available to the academic community and hosts nearly 10,000 registered users from over 30 countries.
He has made seminal contributions to the understanding of apoptosis. Dr. Chinnaiyan has received a number of awards including the Basic Science Research Award awarded by the UM Medical School Dean’s Office, the Pew Biomedical Scholar Award, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Award in Clinical Translational Research, the 2006 Benjamin Castleman Award, the 2007 Ramzi Cotran Young Investigator Award. He recently was appointed as an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and an American Cancer Society Research Professor.