HPV Vaccination: Preventing More with Less

The Annual Advances in Cancer Prevention Lecture is sponsored by the Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program within the Division of Cancer Prevention at NCI. It is also part the course offerings of the annual NCI Summer Curriculum in Cancer Prevention but is open to the entire NIH community and the general public. This annual lecture addresses current challenges and/or approaches used by investigators to address gaps, advance science, and promote the application of successful strategies in the field of cancer prevention and control. Dr. Lowy will be presenting the 2015 annual lecture on the impact of HPV vaccination in cancer prevention.

Douglas Lowy is acting director of the National Cancer Institute and Chief of the intramural Laboratory of Cellular Oncology in the Center for Cancer Research at the NCI. He received his medical degree from New York University School of Medicine, and trained in internal medicine at Stanford University and dermatology at Yale University. His research includes papillomaviruses and the regulation of normal and neoplastic growth. The papillomavirus research is carried out in close collaboration with John Schiller, with whom he has co-authored more than 100 papers over the past 25 years.

In the 1980s, he studied the genetic organization of papillomaviruses and identified the oncogenes encoded by the virus. More recently, he has worked on papillomavirus vaccines and the papillomavirus life cycle. His laboratory was involved in the initial development, characterization, and clinical testing of the preventive virus-like particle-based HPV vaccines that have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and many other countries. It is for this body of work that Dr. Lowy and Dr. John T. Schiller, a Senior Investigator in the Laboratory of Cellular Oncology, received the 2007 Federal Employee of the Year Award from the Partnership for Public Service, the 2007 Dorothy P. Landon-American Association for Cancer Research Prize for Translational Cancer Research, the Sabin Gold Medal in 2011, and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Obama in 2014. Dr. Lowy also received the 2007 Medal of Honor for basic research from the American Cancer Society.

He is listed by the Institute for Scientific Information as one of the most highly cited authors in microbiology, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine of the NAS.