ASTRO to Honor Drs. Lawrence, Shipley with Gold Medal at November Meeting

June 19, 2009 - The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) has selected Theodore Lawrence, M.D., Ph.D., FASTRO, and William Shipley, M.D., FASTRO, as its 2009 Gold Medal recipients, the highest honor that ASTRO bestows. Dr. Lawrence and Dr. Shipley will be presented with their awards at the Gold Medal Ceremony being held November 3, 2009, at 10:45 a.m. during ASTRO's 51st Annual Meeting in Chicago.

"Dr. Lawrence and Dr. Shipley have been outstanding contributors to the Society and to the field of radiation oncology as a whole," said Patricia Eifel, M.D., FASTRO, ASTRO chairman. "It is an honor and a personal pleasure for me to be able to present them with the Gold Medal this year in recognition of their distinguished careers and dedication to the specialty."

Dr. Lawrence is an Isadore Lampe professor of radiation oncology, chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology and a professor in the Department of Environmental Health, School of Public Health at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich.

On a national level, Dr. Lawrence is the chair of the National Cancer Institute Board of Scientific Councilors and a member of the Institute of Medicine. He is also the editor of Translational Oncology, an editor of The Cancer Journal: Journal of the Principles and Practice of Oncology, and the associate editor of Seminars in Radiation Oncology. Dr. Lawrence is an ASTRO past president and former chairman of the Board, and a past member of the ASCO board of directors. He was also named by the ASTRO Board of Directors as one of the first general co-chairs of the of the Radiation Oncology Institute's Vision of Value fundraising campaign, which will raise money to help develop innovative ways of enhancing the profile of radiation oncology in the world cancer community and prepare the specialty for the future. His interests in the laboratory are focused on chemotherapeutic and molecularly targeted radiosensitizers, and his clinical research combines these laboratory studies with conformal radiation guided by metabolic and functional imaging for the treatment of patients with gastrointestinal and central nervous system malignancies.

Dr. Shipley is chair of the genitourinary oncology unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Andres Soriano professor of radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston.

Dr. Shipley is very active in medical societies both in the United States and abroad and has held committee appointments with several of these organizations, including the International Congress of Radiation Oncology, the International Society of Radiation Oncology, the National Bladder Cancer Group and the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group, among many others. Dr. Shipley has authored and co-authored over 160 medical reports, three text books on genitourinary oncology and more than 140 book chapters. He was named a fellow of the American College of Radiology in 1988 and an ASTRO Fellow in 2006.

Dr. Shipley has been actively involved with ASTRO's International Education Subcommittee since 2003, and in 2006, organized the first ASTRO-led international scientific and educational meeting in the Philippines, which was designed to help strengthen ASTRO's involvement in radiation oncology abroad and collaborate with related specialty societies in other countries. ASTRO is the largest radiation oncology society in the world, with more than 10,000 members who specialize in treating patients with radiation therapies. As the leading organization in radiation oncology, biology and physics, the Society is dedicated to improving patient care through education, clinical practice, advancement of science and advocacy.

For more information: www.astro.org