A career dedicated to translational research in colorectal cancer

Abstract

Senior Editor of Colorectal Cancer, Professor Heinz-Josef Lenz* speaks to Roshaine Gunawardana, Managing Commissioning Editor: Heinz-Josef Lenz is Professor of Medicine and Professor of Preventive Medicine, holds the Kathryn Balakrishnan Chair for Cancer Research, is Associate Director, Clinical Research, Co-Chair of GI Oncology, Co-Director USC Center for Molecular Pathways and Drug Discovery at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA. Dr Lenz received his medical degree from Johannes-Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, Germany, and went on to complete a residency in hematology and oncology at the Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany before completing clerkships in oncology and hematology at George Washington University and the Beth Israel Hospital of Harvard Medical School, respectively. He completed a postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the USC Keck School of Medicine. Dr Lenz's research focus is in the identification of predictive and prognostice biomarkers in gastrointestinal (GI) cancers, early drug development and novel clinical trials. He is Co-Chair of SWOG GI Committee, Chair SWOG GI Translational Medicine and member of the NCI GI Steering Committee, NCI Investigational Drug Steering Committee and the NCI Gastroesophageal Task Force. He is the Principal Investigator for R01, U01, U10 and USC PI for N01. He has been awarded a number of prestigious awards including ASCO Young Investigator Award, ASCO Career Development Award, NCI Career Development Award, STOP Cancer Career Development Award and Research Recognition Award. He has published over 270 peer reviewed papers including Nature Medicine, Nature Genetics, JCO and Lancet.