Charles Sawyers

Dr. Sawyers is chair of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He was appointed to US President Barack Obama’s National Cancer Advisory Board, and is former president of the American Association for Cancer Research and of the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He is also a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the co-founder of Aragon (acquired by J&J in 2013) and Seragon (acquired by Genentech in 2014).

Dr. Sawyers received his doctor of medicine from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and worked at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, Los Angeles for nearly 18 years before joining Memorial Sloan Kettering in 2006. An internationally acclaimed cancer researcher, he co-developed the tyrosine kinase inhibitor Gleevec (imatinib mesylate) and the anti-androgen drug Xtandi (enzalutamide). He has received numerous honors and awards, including the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award in 2009.