NCI Early Drug Development (Michaele C. Christian Award)

Michaele C. Christian Award

The award was established in 2007 to honor the twenty-year NCI career of Michaele C. Christian. ­The award is intended to recognize the contributions of individuals, particularly those in mid-career, to the development of novel agents for cancer therapy. Th­e award consists of a plaque and a lectureship that will be delivered at the annual fall NCI Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program Early Drug Development meeting.

Michaele C. Christian, M.D. was appointed Associate Director of the Cancer th­erapy Evaluation Program of DCTD in 1997 after serving as head of the Investigational Drug Branch overseeing the clinical development of novel anticancer agents. In 1995, she established the NCI’s Clinical Trials Monitoring Branch, which oversees quality assurance and compliance for hundreds of NCI clinical trials. Her tenure as Associate Director of CTEP was marked by significant advances in electronic toxicity reporting and compliance monitoring, and even more importantly by the introduction of novel phase 1-2 trial designs into CTEP-sponsored studies along with initiatives that led to multiple trials that successfully combined targeted agents from different pharmaceutical companies.

Dr. Christian received her M.D. summa cum laude from Georgetown University School of Medicine and following internship, residency and fellowships in hematology and oncology at Georgetown, joined the NCI. She is a recipient of the Kober Award from Georgetown University, the NIH Director’s Award in 1995 and 1999, and the prestigious Presidential Rank Award in 2005.

Previous recipients of the Michaele Christian Oncology Drug Development Award:

2007 • Merrill J. Egorin
2008 • Patricia M. LoRusso                                           
2009 • John C. Byrd
2010 • Lillian L. Siu
2011 • Michael A. Carducci
2012 • Afshin Dowlati                                                  
2013 • Geoffrey I. Shapiro
2014 • Carol A. Aghajanian
2015 • Keith T. Flaherty
2016 • Glenn Liu                                              
2017 • Michelle A. Rudek                                             
2018 • Wells A. Messersmith                                                                                                    
2019 • Timothy Yap
2020 • Taofeek K. Owonikoko    
2021 • Jan H. Beumer
2022 • Panagiotis A. Konstantinopoulos
2023 • Philippe L. Bedard
2024 • Kurt Schalper