George Demetri, MD, of Dana-Farber earns Lifetime Achievement Award in Medicine from Stanford University School of Medicine

George Demetri, MD, director of the Sarcoma Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, is being awarded the prestigious J.E. Wallace Sterling Lifetime Achievement Award in Medicine from the Stanford Medicine Alumni Association (SMAA). Demetri, an alumnus of the Stanford University School of Medicine, Class of 1983, will be honored at a dinner held on the Stanford University School of Medicine campus on December 4, 2023.

"Dr. Demetri is a leader in developing targeted therapeutics for cancer and has been pivotal in advancing oncology treatments over the course of his career," said SMAA President Deval Lashkari, PhD, '96. "We are thrilled to honor his remarkable accomplishments in medicine."

Demetri received his BA in biochemistry from Harvard College and his MD from Stanford University before completing his internal medicine residency and serving as chief resident at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is currently director of the Sarcoma Center and senior vice president for experimental therapeutics at Dana-Farber, as well as professor of medicine and co-director of the Ludwig Center at Harvard Medical School.

Demetri's career as a physician-scientist has been dedicated to developing therapeutics targeting specific oncogenic mechanisms to treat precisely defined subsets of sarcomas and other cancers. He has pioneered the development of multiple FDA-approved targeted cancer therapies, including imatinib—the first effective therapeutic for gastrointestinal stromal tumors as a paradigm of a mutation-driven solid tumor.

“It is an exceptionally meaningful honor to be recognized by the medical school at which I received such support for curiosity-driven investigation in medicine. Stanford Medical School was a wonderful environment in which to train, and I will always be grateful for my education there,” said Demetri. “I am also grateful for the ability to have taken that training into practical application as a faculty member at Dana-Farber, which has also provided extraordinary support for building our clinical research and development program here to help patients worldwide.”

Demetri's numerous previous honors include the David Karnofsky Memorial Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology in 2020. He has served on the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Board of Directors and is a member and immediate past chair of the AACR Science Policy and Government Affairs Committee.