The VARIAN-Juliana Denekamp Award established in 2005 by the European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO) honours the great and dearly missed European radiobiologist Prof. Dr. Juliana Denekamp. This award is sponsored by VARIAN Medical Systems, Switzerland. In concordance with the outstanding scientific achievements of Prof. Juliana Denekamp and her enthusiasm for promoting young talents, the award is given to young scientists (junior radiobiologists/radiotherapists) who already at a very early stage in their career have demonstrated excellence and passion for biologically driven cancer research relevant for Radiation Oncology, and who show promise to assume a scientific leadership role in this field in the future.
Born in 1943, Prof. Juliana Denekamp grew up in South Wales, UK. She studied zoology and botany at the University of London and received her PhD at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, London, in 1968. Juliana Denekamp was a leading international scientist in radiation biology applied to radiotherapy, a field now called translational research in Radiation Oncology. Between 1988 and 1994 Juliana Denekamp was director of the Gray Laboratory, UK. Thereafter she was appointed as a Professor of Translational Research at the Umea University, Sweden, a position that she filled very actively both as researcher and teacher until her much too early death in June 2001.
The VARIAN-Juliana Denekamp Award is a single prize of € 2,500 which is awarded on the occasion of the International Wolfsberg Meeting on Molecular Radiation Biology/Oncology in association with ESTRO in uneven years.
Recipients
B. Singers Sorensen (DK) - Hypoxia unregulated genes as biological markers: the development and implementation of a hypoxia classifier
L. Dubois (NL) - New ways to image and target the tumour microenvironment
K. Rouschop (NL) - PERK-signaling and autophagy activation is required for survival of therapy resistant hypoxic cells
E. Hammond (UK) - Role of ATR and ATM as well as p53 for DNA repair signaling under hypoxic conditions
I. Eke (DE) - Role of cell matrix interactions on cellular radiation response and its importance for radio- and chemo-resistance
S. Supiot (FR) - Sensitization of Prostate Cancer Cells to Radiation Therapy on the Basis of Interfering Approaches to
Radiation-Induced Signaling via p53 and ATM
M. Koritzinsky (NL) - Regulation of protein folding during hypoxia
P. Sonveaux (B) - Therapeutic implications of tumor vasculature and its functional reactivity
M. Krause (UK) / C. G. Carus (DE) - Decreased repopulation as well as increased reoxygenation contribute to the improvement in local control after targeting of the EGFR by C223 during fractionated irradiation
R Syljuasen (DE) - Targeting human checkpoint kinase Chk1 to modulate tumour radiosensitivity