UCLA Oncologist Wins Top Research Medal

UCLA oncologist H. Rodney Withers, a pioneer in using radiation to treat cancer, has received the 1998 Charles F. Kettering Medal for outstanding contributions to the diagnosis or treatment of cancer.

The award, which carries a stipend of $250,000, is one of three presented each year by the General Motors Cancer Foundation. The GM awards, announced Monday, are generally considered the most prestigious in cancer research.

Withers demonstrated that cancer cells, which normally proliferate rapidly, are much more susceptible to radiation than are healthy cells that are not dividing. He developed techniques to deliver high doses of radiation to solid tumors over short intervals.

The technique, called hyperfractionation, reduced the side effects of radiation therapy, particularly among patients with head and neck cancers.

Dr. Stanley J. Korsmeyer of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Dr. Suzanne Cory of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, shared the Charles S. Mott Medal for their discovery of the Bcl-2 gene, which keeps tumor cells from dying.

Molecular biologist R. Robert Horvits of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology received the Alfred P. Sloan Medal for his research focusing on programmed cell death. He identified many genes that either drive cells to die or protect them from dying.

The awards will be presented June 10 in a ceremony at the Library of Congress.