Dr. C. L. Sawyers

Biography

  Dr. Charles L. Sawyers, BA, M.D., Ph.D., is the Science Partner of The Column Group LLC. Dr. Sawyers serves as a Scientific Advisor of Boston Millennia Partners. He is the Founder of ORIC Pharmaceuticals and serves as its Member of Scientific Advisory Board. He serves as an Inaugural Director of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program (HOPP) at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He is involved with consultancy of several oncology companies. He founded Seragon Pharmaceuticals Inc. Dr. Sawyers co-founded Aragon Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and served as its Scientific Advisor. He co-founded Agensys, Inc. He spent nearly two decades at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He worked at Brian Druker and Novartis in the development of the kinase inhibitor imatinib/Gleevec as primary therapy for CML and discovered imatinib resistance is caused by BCR-ABL kinase domain mutations. He led preclinical and clinical studies of the novel Abl kinase inhibitor BMS-354825. Dr. Sawyers serves as the Chairman of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He served as the President of the Board at American Association for Cancer Research from April 2013 to April 2014. He serves as a Director of Novartis International AG. Dr. Sawyers has been a Director of Novartis AG since 2013. He has been a Member of Scientific Advisory Board at Petra Pharma Corporation since July 27, 2017. Dr. Sawyers serves as a Member of Scientific Advisory Board at BeiGene, Ltd. and Seragon Pharmaceuticals Inc. He serves as a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board at AVEO Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Nextech Invest Ltd., Exelixis, Inc., and Piramed Limited. He serves as a Member of Scientific Advisory Board for Housey Pharmaceutical Research Laboratories LLC, Blueprint Medicines Corporation and TRACON Pharmaceuticals, Inc. He serves as a Member of Scientific Advisory Board and Member of Cancer Center Advisory Board of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Inc. Dr. Sawyers serves as a Member of Council of Scientific Advisors at The Translational Genomics Research Institute. He has been a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board at Agios Pharmaceuticals, Inc. since February 2009. Dr. Sawyers served as a Director of American Association for Cancer Research. Dr. Sawyers served as a Member of Scientific and Clinical Advisory Board at Medivation, Inc. He served as a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board at TetraLogic Pharmaceuticals Corporation. He is a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator. He served as the President of the American Society of Clinical Investigation. He is the first incumbent of the Marie Josée and Henry R. Kravis Chairman. He is a Director of Prostate Cancer Program and UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is also a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. He served on the National Cancer Institute's Board of Scientific Councilors. He is a Peter Bing Professor at the UCLA School of Medicine. His research is best demonstrated through his studies of BCR-ABL tyrosine kinase function in chronic myeloid leukemia. He focuses on how signaling pathway abnormalities in cancer cells can be exploited as targets for new cancer drugs. Dr. Sawyers played a key role in the clinical development of Gleevec® (imatinib). He led the development of a second drug called dasatinib, which is effective in CML patients whose disease fails to respond to imatinib. He has extended this approach to other diseases, including prostate cancer and glioblastoma, through laboratory-based studies that suggest new treatment strategies undergoing clinical testing. He has received numerous honors and awards including Howard Hughes Medical Institute Physician Research Fellow from 1991 to 1993, Cheryl Whitlock Prize for Leukaemia Research in 1994, Franklin D Murphy Prize in 1998, Stohlman Scholar, Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research Society in 2000. He is an inaugural recipient of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. He has received numerous accolades, including the Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award, the AACR-Richard & Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award, the Dorothy P. Landon-AACR Prize for Translational Cancer Research, the 2009 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award and the American Society of Clinical Oncology David A. Karnofsky Award. He completed a Residency in Internal Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, Medical Center and a Clinical Fellowship in Hematology/Oncology and a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Molecular Biology at the UCLA School of Medicine. He holds a Ph.D. degree. Dr. Sawyers holds an M.D. from The Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. from Princeton University.

Research Interest

Human Oncology and Pathogenesis