AACR Announced Award Recipients for the 2024 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium

Christina Curtis and Steffi Oesterreich are Recognized for Their Groundbreaking Contributions to Breast Cancer Research 

The San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), a cosponsor of SABCS, will recognize two distinguished researchers for their outstanding contributions to breast cancer research during the 2024 SABCS, taking place from December 10-13 at the Henry B. González Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas.

Christina Curtis is the recipient of the 2024 AACR Outstanding Investigator Award for Breast Cancer Research, while Steffi Oesterreich is the recipient of the AACR Distinguished Lectureship in Breast Cancer Research. Both will deliver their award lectures at the upcoming SABCS24 next month.

Christina Curtis’ award lecture will be presented on Wednesday, December 11, at 3 p.m. CT in the Stars at Night Ballroom 1-2 at the convention center.

Steffi Oesterreich will present her award lecture on Thursday, December 12, at 3 p.m. CT in the Stars at Night Ballroom 1-2 at the convention center.

Steffi Oesterreich

Steffi Oesterreich, PhD, has been selected as the recipient of the 2024 AACR Distinguished Lectureship in Breast Cancer Research, supported by Aflac, Inc. This award recognizes exceptional scientific contributions that have the potential to reshape our understanding of breast cancer’s causes, diagnosis, treatment, or prevention.

Steffi Oesterreich, the Shear Family Foundation Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology at the University of Pittsburgh, is also a coleader of the Cancer Biology Program at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. She holds additional roles as codirector and director of education at the Women’s Cancer Research Center, a joint initiative of UPMC Hillman Cancer Center and Magee-Womens Research Institute.

She is being honored for her groundbreaking research on invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) of the breast, which has significantly changed how ILC is viewed in the scientific, clinical, and patient advocacy communities, establishing it as a distinct subtype of breast cancer.

Oesterreich’s early work focused on estrogen receptor alpha (ER) and anti-estrogen therapies. She was part of the team that identified the first naturally occurring ER-activating mutation in breast cancer. Later, as she established her own lab, Oesterreich made pioneering discoveries about how ER not only activates but also represses gene expression. These findings have expanded understanding of ER’s complex role in regulating the breast cancer transcriptome and highlighted how ER-driven epigenetic changes contribute to resistance to endocrine therapy.

Christina Curtis

Christina Curtis, PhD, MSc, has been honored with the 2024 AACR Outstanding Investigator Award for Breast Cancer Research, supported by the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. This award recognizes an investigator whose pioneering work has significantly advanced the understanding, detection, diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of breast cancer, spanning across basic, clinical, translational, and epidemiological research.

Christina Curtis is the RZ Cao Professor of Medicine, Genetics, and Biomedical Data Science, and directs artificial intelligence and cancer genomics at Stanford University School of Medicine. She also leads breast cancer translational research and co-directs the Molecular Tumor Board at the Stanford Cancer Institute. She is being recognized for her groundbreaking contributions to uncovering the molecular factors of breast cancer and developing key prognostic and predictive biomarkers.

One of Christina Curtis‘ early major achievements was her groundbreaking study, which established a new molecular classification of breast cancer using genome-wide copy number and gene expression data from the METABRIC cohort of 2,000 women. Her work redefined the molecular landscape of breast cancer, identifying 11 distinct subgroups with unique genomic drivers and clinical outcomes, and clarifying the heterogeneity of expression-based intrinsic subgroups. She demonstrated that several breast cancer subgroups share similar copy number alterations, akin to HER2-positive cancer.

Christina Curtis conducted a 20-year clinical follow-up of breast cancer patients, including those from the METABRIC cohort, revealing key molecular alterations linked to recurrence. She showed that the subgroups she defined improved predictions of late-stage relapse over traditional markers and identified four ER-positive, HER2-negative subgroups with a sustained recurrence risk over 20 years, accounting for 25% of ER-positive cases. These findings led to a biomarker-driven phase II trial testing targeted therapies for high-risk, early-stage ER-positive patients. Curtis also developed predictive biomarkers and advanced our understanding of cancer’s early spread to metastatic sites.

AACR:

“Congratulations to Christina Curtis, Precipient of the 2024 AACR Outstanding Investigator Award for Breast Cancer Research, and Steffi Oesterreich, recipient of the AACR Distinguished Lectureship in Breast Cancer Research. They will both present their respective award lectures at SABCS24 next month.”

Further Reading:

The San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) 2024

Breast cancer highlights from the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium 2024 by SPCC