Chi Van Dang, MD, PhD, FAACR, was the recipient of the 2024 AACR-Margaret Foti Award for Leadership and Extraordinary Achievements in Cancer Research at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2024 in San Diego. He received the award in recognition of his notable contributions towards defining the function of the MYC oncogene. Mutations and alterations of this particular gene are commonly associated with various types of cancer.

His award lecture, MYC on the Path to Cancer: From Saigon to AACR, on Monday, April 8, is available on demand for registered Annual Meeting attendees through July 10, 2024, on the virtual meeting platform.

The Margaret Foti Award was established in 2007 to honor the pioneers of cancer research whose contributions and achievements are making a major impact on the field.

Dang’s research has highlighted the role of MYC as a central regulator of cell proliferation and metabolism. His laboratory was the first to show that MYC alters the utilization of key sugars in cancer cells.

This supported the hypothesis that cancer cells can become addicted to re-engineered metabolic signaling and that interrupting certain metabolic pathways could essentially rewire those cells. These landmark findings represent a promising prospect for anticancer treatments.

Dang serves as the scientific director at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Cancer Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, where his laboratory is currently located.

Born in Saigon, Vietnam, Dang arrived in the United States in 1967. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree at the University of Michigan, a doctorate in chemistry at Georgetown University, and a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University. He completed a fellowship at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), where he began his work on the MYC gene.

Following his fellowship at UCSF, Dang returned to Johns Hopkins University and later became the vice dean of research in the School of Medicine. He became the director of the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania in 2011 before returning to Johns Hopkins to assume his current position.

Dang has been a member of the AACR since 1996. He has served the organization in several capacities, including participation in several AACR committees and a tenure as Editor-in-Chief of the AACR journal Cancer Research from 2018 to 2023. He was also inducted as a Fellow of the AACR Academy in 2018.

Dang is a member of several societies such as the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He formerly served as a chair of the National Cancer Institute’s Board of Scientific Advisors, as well as a member of the Biden Cancer Moonshot Blue Ribbon Panel.

He dedicated his award lecture to three people who were important in his life: his best man and childhood friend Thomas G. Landaal, his older brother Bob Van Dang, and former post-doc Lawrence B. Gardner, MD.

“All of them died [at] too early of an age,” Dang said. “And so, while we celebrate all the victories we’ve had lately, there’s so much more work to do, and I thank all of you for continuing to fight this fight.”