Novartis researchers honored by AACR

Alex Matter, therapeutic area head of oncology research at NovartisOncology, is one of four recipients of the annual Bruce Cain Award for their discovery and preclinical work on Glivec/Gleevec (imatinib), used in the treatment of certain forms of leukemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumors. The annual award was bestowed by the American Association for Cancer Research, which first set up the prize with Warner-Lambert (now Pfizer group) in 1982, to honor the work of Dr Cain of New Zealand, at its 2002 meeting in San Francisco, USA.

Dr Matter will share the award with his co-workers, Elisabeth Buchdunger from preclinical research, Jurg Zimmermann, head of combinatorial chemistry at Novartis, and Nicholas Lydon, formerly with the oncology research team at Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis) and currently vice president for small-molecule drug discovery at Amgen.