Newswise — Bethesda, Md. – Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, renown scientist and chief executive officer of NantWorks, will present “Activating Natural Killer and T cells to Induce T Cell Memory for the Treatment of Cancer: The Cancer Moonshot” when he delivers the 2023 David Packard Award Lecture at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU), Tuesday, April 25, 2023.
A transplant surgeon, inventor and philanthropist, Dr. Soon-Shiong was selected by the White House in 2020 to participate in "Operation Warp Speed" to help quickly develop a COVID-19 vaccine. He has more than 500 patents issued worldwide for his scientific pursuits and more than 100 publications.
Dr. Soon-Shiong’s interest in immunology started more than two decades ago while working at UCLA, where he performed the first whole organ pancreas transplant. He went on to establish American Pharmaceutical Partners in 2001 and, in 2005, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved his invention, Abraxane, the first protein nanoparticle chemotherapy for breast cancer. By 2013, the FDA had approved the drug for lung and pancreatic cancer. The science around this drug therapy, and how it could transform cancer care and the development of a cancer vaccine, is the subject of his Packard Lecture address.
USU’s annual David Packard Award Lecture was established by the University’s faculty senate in honor of Hewlett-Packard co-founder David Packard, who served as Deputy Secretary of Defense and USU’s second president in the 1970s. Previous Packard Award Lecturers include former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, Nobel Laureate Dr. Stanley Prusiner, and NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, among many other distinguished scholars and scientists.
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About the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences: The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, founded by an act of Congress in 1972, is the nation’s federal health sciences university and the academic heart of the Military Health System. USU students are primarily active-duty uniformed officers in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Public Health Service who receive specialized education in tropical and infectious diseases, TBI and PTSD, disaster response and humanitarian assistance, global health, and acute trauma care. USU also has graduate programs in oral biology, biomedical sciences and public health committed to excellence in research. The University's research program covers a wide range of areas important to both the military and public health. For more information about USU and its programs, visit www.usuhs.edu.
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