MEDIA CONTACT: Elizabeth Crown at 312-503-8928 or e-crown@northwestern.edu

October 26, 2004

Folkman, angiogenesis pioneer, to give lecture

Famed cancer surgeon and researcher Judah Folkman, M.D., will be the Distinguished Lecturer at the Sixth Annual Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium at 10:45 a.m. Friday, Oct. 29, at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers.

The symposium will be held at the Sheraton, 301 E. North Water St., from Thursday, Oct. 28, through Sunday, Oct. 31.

Folkman’s lecture is titled: “Can Angiogenesis Inhibitors Be Used Before Cancer Is Symptomatic or Identified by Conventional Methods?”

Folkman is director of surgical research, Children’s Hospital, and Andrus Professor of Pediatric Surgery and professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School.

Folkman pioneered the notion that tumors recruit their own network of blood vessels -- a process known as angiogenesis -- in order to grow and spread and, that, conversely, tumors could be “starved to death” by cutting off their blood supply.

His discoveries on the mechanism of angiogenesis opened a field of investigation now pursued worldwide. His laboratory reported the first purified angiogenesis molecule and the first angiogenesis inhibitor, and also proposed the concept of angiogenic disease. Folkman and his colleagues are currently conducting clinical trials based on this research.

Folkman was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1990. He also is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the Institute of Medicine. He holds honorary degrees from five universities and is author of more than 300 peer-reviewed articles and other publications.

The annual Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium provides a forum for discussing and presenting laboratory and clinical research on the care of patients with breast cancer.

William Gradishar, M.D., associate professor of medicine in the division of hematology/oncology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, a researcher at The Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University and breast cancer specialist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, is chair of the Sixth Annual Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium.

Co-chairing the symposium are V. Craig Jordan, Diana, Princess of Wales Professor of Cancer Research, professor of molecular pharmacology and biological chemistry and director of the Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Research Program at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, and Monica Morrow, M.D., chair of surgical oncology, G. Willing Pepper Chair in Cancer Research, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia.

For more information or to register online for the breast cancer symposium, see: www.cancer.northwestern.edu.