Cigall Kadoch received the 2020 AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Basic Cancer Research.
Kadoch is assistant professor of pediatric oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and an Institute Member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
She is being recognized for her pioneering biochemical and functional characterization of normal and aberrant SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complexes and her elucidation of the mechanisms by which the disruption of these complexes contributes to over one-fifth of human cancers.
The AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Basic Cancer Research was established by the AACR to recognize an early-career investigator for meritorious achievements in basic cancer research. The award is intended to recognize an individual who has not yet reached 46 years of age at the time of their award presentation.
Kadoch is known for her work involving the biology of ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling complexes, which are groups of proteins that influence how DNA is packaged, thereby controlling when and how strongly genes are expressed.
In a landmark study early in her career, Kadoch discovered that more than 20% of cancers have mutations in genes encoding proteins that are part of mammalian SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complexes. Since then, the focus of her research has been on characterizing the role of each of the 29 potential subunits of the SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complexes in normal tissue development and defining how mutated forms of these subunits contribute to cancer development.
