The Pacific Northwest Research Institute (PNRI, now PNDRI) in Seattle has named Dr. Leland Hartwell the recipient of the 2004 Langerhans-Virchow Award. Hartwell, the President and Director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, will receive the award on Wednesday afternoon, April 7, at Swedish Hospital's Glaser Auditorium, where he will also deliver the award lecture, "Technology Development and Curing Cancer."

Hartwell received the Nobel Prize in 2001 for his pioneering discoveries of the mechanisms of cell division. Hartwell's Langerhans-Virchow lecture will focus on the challenging public question--highlighted in a recent issue of Fortune magazine--how we can win the war on cancer.

Hartwell is the fifth annual recipient of PNRI's award lecture. Earlier speakers have included Nobel Laureate Edmond Fischer, Donald Steiner, Ralph Steinman, and Ronald Kahn, all members of the National Academy of Sciences, all eminent leaders in cancer and diabetes research. "The Langerhans-Virchow Award allows us to acknowledge great science," says PNRI President and Scientific Director, Dr. Paul Robertson. "Our research at PNRI, devoted to preventing and curing diabetes and cancer, is deeply indebted to the seminal work of these scientists. It is an honor for us to recognize them."

The award is named after Rudolf Virchow and Paul Langerhans, two 19th century researchers who made key discoveries in cell biology on which much of modern diabetes and cancer research depend. Further information about them, about Hartwell, and about the Langerhans-Virchow award is available on the web.

Drawing on his own research and surveying the broad field of cancer studies, Hartwell will describe how the insights that have been gained from lab research are being used to develop targeted drugs to interrupt tumor growth and spread. He will also outline the key challenges in the new science of early cancer diagnosis--identifying the best candidates for research, creating effective scientific collaborations to target those candidates, and developing a model organism, which will facilitate concentrated scientific work.

The award lecture will begin at 3:30pm. It will be followed by a reception at PNRI. Both are free, and the public is invited to attend.