Award for Dr. Weichselbaum, Who Laid the Foundations of Chemoradiotherapy and Oligometastasis

Every year, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) honors individuals who have played an important historical role in cancer care with its awards. The developments recognized by these awards and their contributions to oncology are presented at ASCO annual meetings, helping us better understand the history of cancer medicine and the challenges it has faced.

ASCO 2018 Awards begin with the David A. Karnofsky Award . First presented in 1970, this award recognized an oncologist who made significant contributions to cancer research, diagnosis and/or treatment. This year, Professor Ralph R. Weichselbaum , co-director of the Ludwig Center for Metastasis Research and chair of Radiation and Cellular Oncology at the University of Chicago, received this honor.

Born on December 12, 1945, Ralph Weichselbaum is an American radiation oncologist specializing in this field. He grew up in Chicago, Illinois, where ASCO annual meetings are held, and completed medical school at the University of Wisconsin in 1971. Following a research fellowship in surgical oncology, he completed his residency at the Harvard Medical School Center for Radiation Therapy in 1975 and remained on the Harvard Medical School faculty until 1984, attaining the rank of associate professor in Radiation Oncology. In 1984, he became chair of Radiation and Cellular Oncology in the University of Chicago Division of Biological Sciences, where he has remained ever since. Married with three adult children, Dr. Weichselbaum holds hundreds of patents and has more than 790 publications. His well-known head and neck cancer paper has been cited more than 1600 times. He is also co-editor of the comprehensive cancer textbook Cancer Medicine .

His Award-Winning Work

Dr. Weichselbaum is one of the scientists who identified the fundamental mechanisms of radiation-inducible gene therapy and the concurrent use of chemotherapy with radiotherapy (chemoradiotherapy). Chemoradiotherapy is a main treatment strategy for head and neck cancers and lung cancer. He also discovered fundamental mechanisms of signal transduction and gene expression following tumor exposure to radiation.

Together with Dr. Samuel Hellman, Weichselbaum described the spectrum theory of metastasis, explaining that not all stage 4 (metastatic) cancers have the same biology. This is known as the spectrum theory of metastasis. According to this theory, they predicted that some patients would develop only limited metastatic disease called oligometastasis . This concept, which we now understand much better, is oligometastatic disease. Patients with a small number of metastases confined to particular organs have a more favorable disease course than those with widespread metastases, and local treatment with curative intent (complete recovery) can be offered. Two examples are colon cancer with liver-only metastasis and breast cancer with bone-only metastasis. In breast cancer with bone-only metastasis, the bone metastasis can receive one of the nonsurgical cancer treatments or radiotherapy, while standard local treatment can be used for the breast tumor.

Weichselbaum and his colleagues are currently investigating the relationship between radiotherapy and immunotherapy . This research focuses on the systemic effects of locally administered radiation mediated through the immune system.

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