DMITRI ALDEN was named an Honorary Foreign Member of the French National Academy of Surgery. He will be officially recognized at the academy's 2014 Solemn Ceremony Jan. 22 in Paris.
BARBARA ANN BURTNESS was named clinical research program leader of the Head and Neck Cancers Program at Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven and co-director of the Developmental Therapeutics Research Program for Yale Cancer Center. She will become a professor of medicine in medical oncology and will begin her appointment April 1.
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is seeking to appoint up to 25 new biomedical researchers through a national open competition. The initiative represents an investment of approximately $150 million in basic biomedical research over the next five years.
J. ROBERT BECK was named deputy director and chief academic and administrative officer of Fox Chase Cancer Center.
The rate of new lung cancer cases decreased among men and women from 2005 to 2009, largely due to tobacco control efforts, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Congress has passed a $1.012 trillion omnibus spending bill, easing the sequestration cuts set for fiscal 2014 and keeping the government open through September. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill by Saturday.
In another round of changes in the executive suite at MD Anderson Cancer Center, Dan Fontaine was appointed head the institutional advancement division, President Ronald DePinho announced in an email to the faculty and staff.
When surveyed by the Faculty Senate in October 2012, nearly a third of faculty members at MD Anderson Cancer Center who responded said they were likely to leave the institution within three years.
HAROLD VARMUS, director of the NCI and co-recipient of a Nobel Prize for research into the genetic basis of cancer, received the Medal of Honour from the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France.
FDA granted accelerated approval for Mekinist (trametinib) in combination with Tafinlar (dabrafenib) for unresectable melanoma or metastatic melanoma with BRAF V600E or V600K mutations.
