Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) Associate Director for Education, Sylvia D. Stroup Scholar of Nutrition and Cancer, and Graduate College Associate Dean Zeynep Madak Erdogan received the prestigious 2024 Michael B. Kastan Award for Research Excellence given by the American Association for Cancer Research’s (AACR) Molecular Cancer Research (MCR) journal. The award recognizes one paper annually with “the potential to shift paradigms, inspire translational activity, and raise awareness of new scientific areas.” Madak Erdogan was honored as the corresponding author for this highly collaborative paper, “Targeting Metabolic Adaptations in the Breast Cancer-Liver Metastatic Niche Using Dietary Approaches to Improve Endocrine Therapy Efficacy,” published in June 2022.
“It was a big surprise to receive this award,” said Madak Erdogan. “The award is an encouragement to pursue more studies like this one. We had to work hard initially to prove that our system was an adequate representation of liver metastasis for breast cancer patients. There was skepticism. Science is always a process, though. At the time of our paper’s publishing, our system was a novel concept and more disputed, but as the paper was shared, cited, and tested, our system is now more mainstream in the lab and the field.”