Department of Molecular and Experimental Medicine
The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA
Motivation:
Dr. Peter K. Vogt is honored for his efforts to further understand of the causes of cancer. His discovery that the Rous sarcoma virus causes cancer through the activity of a single gene was a turning point in cancer research which has led to our understanding of cancer’s genetic mechanisms.
Dr. Vogt has spent his entire career in cancer research, much of it focused on studying cancer-causing viruses. In 1970, he published his revolutionary work on the genetic basis of the cancer-causing capability of the Rous sarcoma virus. He subsequently made several further pioneering discoveries, including the identification of several genes that are important in driving human cancers: myc, jun and PI3K. His more recent studies have shown that cancer-causing mutations in PI3K can render it a specific therapeutic target and have led to the ongoing clinical development of numerous agents designed to exploit this.
Dr. Vogt received his doctorate from the University of Tübingen in Germany, and completed postdoctoral training at the University of California, Berkeley, before becoming associate professor of pathology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver. He then served as professor of microbiology at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, and then as the Hastings distinguished professor of microbiology and chairman of the Department of Microbiology at the University of Southern California School of Medicine in Los Angeles before going to The Scripps Research Institute.
Numerous accolades have been awarded to Vogt, including the California Scientist of the Year Award (1975), the Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine (1985), the Robert J. and Claire Pasarow Award (1987), the Bristol Myers Award (1989), the ICN International Prize in Virology (1989), the Charles S. Mott Prize from the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation (1991), the Gregor Johann Mendel Medal from the National Academy of the Sciences of the Czech Republic (2008) and the Albert Szent-Györgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research (2010).
