Women in Cancer Research Scholar Award goes to Dr. Charlotte Pawlyn

Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) PhD student and Royal Marsden Hospital haematology registrar Dr. Charlotte Pawlyn has been awarded a Women in Cancer Research Scholar Award at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting in Philadelphia.

She received the award in recognition of her research into new treatment strategies for myeloma patients. Dr. Pawlyn is the only woman in the UK, and one of only five outside of the US, to receive the prestigious Award this year.

Dr. Pawlyn is a Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Fellow and a member of the team working on the Myeloma UK Research Programme at the ICR, which is focused on studying the genetics of myeloma and discovering and developing new effective treatments for patients.

She was awarded the scientist-in-training award for her work investigating the role of a protein called EZH2 in myeloma. Her research, presented at the AACR conference, linked increased activity of EZH2 to more aggressive forms of myeloma. The exciting and novel nature of her work was recognised because it could help in the development of new targeted treatment for myeloma.

Myeloma UK chief executive Eric Low said: “To be the only woman in the UK to receive the award this year is testament to the ground-breaking work Charlotte is doing at the ICR. I’m proud that Myeloma UK is working in partnership with the ICR on innovative research like this that has the potential to make a difference to the lives of myeloma patients.”

Recipients work is chosen from hundreds of submissions and Dr. Pawlyn is one of only 30 young international female researchers to be awarded in 2015.

Dr. Pawlyn said: “Attending the AACR meeting was a great opportunity for me to hear about the incredible amount of exciting new research being performed internationally and attend educational talks given by scientific leaders in cancer-related fields from around the world. I found it very inspiring and am looking forward to taking some of my new knowledge back to the lab to feed into my own research. My eventual aim will be to translate these laboratory findings into the clinic by trying to determine which patients may benefit most from the novel treatment approach.”