Philip Kantoff Receives the 2024 ASCO Excellence in Teaching Award

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has announced Philip Kantoff, MD as the recipient of the 2024 ASCO Excellence in Teaching Award. This award acknowledges Dr. Kantoff’s dedication and contributions to the field of global oncology.

Dr. Philip Kantoff was appointed the Chief Executive Officer of Convergent Therapeutics on July 1, 2021. Prior to joining Convergent, Dr. Kantoff spent six years as Chairman of the Department of Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he directed a department of approximately 500 physicians and physician-scientists, caring for cancer patients and developing improved testing and cancer therapies. He is the Emeritus Jerome and Nancy Kohlberg Chair in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. At Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), he was the Chief of the Solid Tumor Oncology Division, and he served as Director of the Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology at the DFCI. In those positions, Dr. Kantoff created robust programs of clinical care and research as well as laboratory research. During this time, he served as a clinical researcher and principal investigator in significant trials devoted to the development of new therapeutic targets for men with advanced prostate cancer and, throughout his tenure at DFCI, he helped to set broad clinical research priorities.

Dr. Kantoff is a member of numerous professional societies and editorial boards, has written more than 500 articles and books and has lectured throughout the world. Among his significant accomplishments, Dr. Kantoff was honored with the Baruj Benacerraf Clinical Investigator Award from 1994 to 1997 and the Harvard Medical School Kantoff-Sang Lectureship Award from 2011 through the present time. He was also recognized with the first Prostate Cancer Foundation Mentor of Excellence Award and has been named to the second-year class of “Giants in Cancer Care.” He was inducted into the Association of American Physicians in 2017. Dr. Kantoff is board certified in internal medicine and medical oncology. He completed his research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health and his medical oncology fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

About the ASCO Excellence in Teaching Award

First presented in 2014, this award recognizes teaching as a vital part of cancer care for the population and for the future of ASCO and brings awareness to the need for teachers to train more oncologists for the future. The award underscores ASCO’s belief that teaching is as important to the future of cancer medicine as are research, care delivery and clinical work. This award is intended to recognize, encourage and reward individuals who have had a demonstrable impact on their trainees (residents, postdoctoral fellows, clinical fellows) and who have inspired and shaped the trainee’s practice of cancer medicine.