The American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), established in 1908, is one of the oldest and most respected medical honor societies in the United States.
The American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), established in 1908, is one of the oldest and most respected medical honor societies in the United States.
The ASCI is an honorary society to which more than 2,800 physician-scientists from all medical specialties belong. Prospective members are proposed by standing members of the society and elected to ASCI on the basis of an outstanding record of scholarly achievement in biomedical research. The ASCI includes physician-scientists who are active clinically, in basic research, or in teaching. Many of its senior members are widely recognized leaders in academic medicine. As of 2015 the membership of ASCI has included 417 members of the National Academy of Medicine, 191 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 40 Lasker Award winners, and 19 Nobel laureates.
The ASCI supports the research into basic mechanisms and/or treatment of human diseases, and to the education of future generations of physician-scientists. The ASCI considers the nominations of several hundred physician-scientists from the United States and abroad each year and elects up to 80 new members each year for their significant research accomplishments relatively early in their careers.
The ASCI is a member of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), which includes numerous biomedical research societies. The ASCI publishes the peer-reviewed biomedical research journals Journal of Clinical Investigation and JCI Insight.
A collection of the society's papers is held at the National Library of Medicine. [1]
The American Society for Clinical Investigation has its origins in a chance meeting in June 1907 on the Atlantic City boardwalk, in which Samuel James Meltzer, David Linn Edsall, Wilder Tileston, Warfield Theobald Longcope, and probably Joseph Hersey Pratt were present ("ASCI Secretary’s Book, 1907–1965". History of Medicine Division. Bethesda, MD: National Library of Medicine.). The parties to this meeting considered the need for a new society, separate from the Association of American Physicians (AAP), whose membership was at that time limited to 160 individuals. The purpose of the new society would be to give younger men who were not yet members of the AAP, and not eligible for membership in the AAP, the advantages of meeting other young men active in medical research. [2] The new organization was formally constituted on May 11, 1908, at the New Willard Hotel in Washington. A total of 32 physicians agreed to become charter members of ASCI in 1908. The first meeting of the ASCI was held in Atlantic City on May 10, 1909. [3] The organization was also known as the "Young Turks" in allusion to the rebellious spirit in which it was founded, as a counterweight to the older and more deeply established Association of American Physicians (colloquially known as the "Old Turks" in subsequent years). [4] These terms are no longer used by the Society. [5]
Since 1998, the ASCI has awarded an annual prize to a scientist renowned for advancing his/her field and mentoring future scientists. Originally called the "ASCI Award," it was renamed in 2006 in honor of Stanley Korsmeyer, the award's first recipient, who had died the previous year. The awardee receives a US$20,000 honorarium and presents the Korsmeyer Lecture at the Society's annual meeting. [6]
| Year | Winner(s) |
|---|---|
| 2023 | Nicole Calakos |
| 2022 | Peter Tontonoz |
| 2021 | Benjamin L. Ebert |
| 2020 | Judith A. James |
| 2019 | Michael S. Diamond |
| 2018 | Joseph Heitman |
| 2017 | James E. Crowe, Jr. |
| 2016 | Jean-Laurent Casanova |
| 2015 | Louis J. Ptáček |
| 2014 | Beth Levine |
| 2013 | Bruce Beutler |
| 2012 | William G. Kaelin, Gregg L. Semenza |
| 2011 | Brian J. Druker, Charles L. Sawyers |
| 2010 | Andrew R. Marks |
| 2009 | Mitchell A. Lazar |
| 2008 | Gerald I. Shulman |
| 2007 | D. Gary Gilliland |
| 2006 | Shaun R. Coughlin |
| 2005 | Francis Collins |
| 2004 | David Ginsburg |
| 2003 | Craig B. Thompson |
| 2002 | Ronald A. DePinho |
| 2001 | Laurie Glimcher |
| 2000 | Christine E. Seidman |
| 1999 | Richard D. Klausner |
| 1998 | Stanley J. Korsmeyer |
Stanley Joel Korsmeyer was an American research scientist known for his work on B cell lymphomas and apoptosis. Born and educated in the US state of Illinois, Korsmeyer spent most of his career as a professor at Washington University School of Medicine and later the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute. He rose to prominence in the early 1980s as a research fellow at the National Cancer Institute. There he co-discovered the genetic cause of most cases of the cancer follicular lymphoma – the misregulation of the gene Bcl-2. Korsmeyer went on to start his own laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis, further studying the role of Bcl-2 in cell biology. His group's work expanded the paradigm of cancer-causing genes, providing the first example of how interfering with programmed cell death could lead to cancer development. Korsmeyer authored over 250 scientific papers over the course of his career. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences at the age of 45. Korsmeyer died of lung cancer in 2005, at the age of 54.
John Auer was an American physiologist and pharmacologist. He published nearly 150 papers during his career and is credited with the first description of Auer rods. Auer also contributed to the study of anaphylaxis and helped develop modern thoracic surgery. During World War I, he conducted wartime research with the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.
Edward ("Ted") Hance Shortliffe is a Canadian-born American biomedical informatician, physician, and computer scientist. Shortliffe is a pioneer in the use of artificial intelligence in medicine. He was the principal developer of the clinical expert system MYCIN, one of the first rule-based artificial intelligence expert systems, which obtained clinical data interactively from a physician user and was used to diagnose and recommend treatment for severe infections. While never used in practice, its performance was shown to be comparable to and sometimes more accurate than that of Stanford infectious disease faculty. This spurred the development of a wide range of activity in the development of rule-based expert systems, knowledge representation, belief nets and other areas, and its design greatly influenced the subsequent development of computing in medicine.
Hashem B. El-Serag is a Palestinian-American physician and medical researcher best known for his research in liver cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and the hepatitis C virus. He serves as the Margaret M. and Albert B. Alkek Chairman of the Department of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine as well as the Director of the Texas Medical Center Digestive Disease Center. El-Serag previously served as president of the American Gastroenterological Association and Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), based in Rockville, Maryland, is a non-profit organization of scientific societies in the United States. With a focus on the biological and biomedical sciences, the federation represents scientists in such fields as anatomy, physiology, immunology, biochemistry, molecular biology, toxicology, genetics, and nutrition.
Ajit Varki is a physician-scientist who is distinguished professor of medicine and cellular and molecular medicine, founding co-director of the Glycobiology Research and Training Center at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and founding co-director of the UCSD/Salk Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA). He is also executive editor of the textbook Essentials of Glycobiology and distinguished visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras and the National Center for Biological Sciences in Bangalore. He is a specialist advisor to the Human Gene Nomenclature Committee.
The Association of American Physicians (AAP) is an honorary medical society founded in 1885 by the Canadian physician Sir William Osler and six other distinguished physicians of his era for "the advancement of scientific and practical medicine."
The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) is an Arlington, Virginia-based non-profit organization of scientists, clinicians, students and program professionals whose longstanding mission is to promote global health through the prevention and control of infectious and other diseases that disproportionately afflict the global poor. ASTMH members work in areas of research, health care and education that encompass laboratory science, international field studies, clinical care and country-wide programs of disease control. The current organization was formed in 1951 with the amalgamation of the American Society of Tropical Medicine, founded in 1903, and the National Malaria Society, founded in 1941.
The American Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP) is a society of biomedical scientists who investigate mechanisms of disease. ASIP membership includes scientists in the academic, government, hospital, and pharmaceutical arenas that focus their research on the pathogenesis, classification, diagnosis and manifestations of disease. Research findings are ultimately used in the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of human diseases. The word pathology is derived from the Greek word "pathos" meaning "disease."
Beth Cindy Levine was an American microbiologist. She was an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), Professor of Internal Medicine and Microbiology, Director of the Center for Autophagy Research and Charles Cameron Sprague Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She specialized in the field of autophagy; more specifically in its regulation and its role in diverse diseases, including cancer and infectious diseases. Levine was described as a pioneer in the field of modern mammalian autophagy.
Craig B. Thompson is an American cell biologist and a former president of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
A physician-scientist is traditionally a holder of a medical degree and a doctor of philosophy also known as an MD-PhD. Compared to other clinicians, physician-scientists invest significant time and professional effort in scientific research and spend correspondingly less time in direct clinical practice with ratios of research to clinical time ranging from 50/50 to 80/20. Physician-scientists are often employed by academic or research institutions where they drive innovation across a wide range of medical specialties and may also use their extensive training to focus their clinical practices on specialized patient populations, such as those with rare genetic diseases or cancers. Although they are a minority of both practicing physicians and active research scientists, physician-scientists are often cited as playing a critical role in translational medicine and clinical research by adapting biomedical research findings to health care applications. Over time, the term physician scientist has expanded to holders of other clinical degrees—such as nurses, dentists, and veterinarians— who are also included by the United States National Institutes of Health in its studies of the physician-scientist workforce (PSW).
Gregg Leonard Semenza is a pediatrician and Professor of Genetic Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He serves as the director of the vascular program at the Institute for Cell Engineering. He is a 2016 recipient of the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. He is known for his discovery of HIF-1, which allows cancer cells to adapt to oxygen-poor environments. He shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability" with William Kaelin Jr. and Peter J. Ratcliffe. Semenza has had ten research papers retracted due to falsified data.
William G. Kaelin Jr. is an American Nobel laureate physician-scientist. He is a professor of medicine at Harvard University and the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute. His laboratory studies tumor suppressor proteins. In 2016, Kaelin received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the AACR Princess Takamatsu Award. He also won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2019 along with Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza.
David A. Scheinberg is an American physician, scientist, drug developer, and entrepreneur, who is currently Vincent Astor Chair, and Chairman of the Molecular Pharmacology Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). He is a pioneer and inventor of targeted alpha particle therapies and alpha particle generators for use in patients with cancer.
Charis Eng is a Singapore-born physician-scientist and geneticist at the Cleveland Clinic, notable for identifying the PTEN gene. She is the Chairwoman and founding Director of the Genomic Medicine Institute of the Cleveland Clinic, founding Director and attending clinical cancer geneticist of the institute’s clinical component, the Center for Personalized Genetic Healthcare, and Professor and Vice Chairwoman of the Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
Christine Edry Seidman is the Thomas W. Smith Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Cardiovascular Genetics Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She operates a joint lab with her husband, Jonathan Seidman, where they study genetic mechanisms of heart disease. In recognition of her scientific contributions, she was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and National Academy of Medicine.
Richard D. Klausner is an American scientist who served as the 11th director of the National Cancer Institute of the United States.
Judith Ann James is an American rheumatologist. She first came to Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMFR) as a Sir Alexander Fleming Scholar in the summer of 1988, and then joined the foundation’s scientific staff in 1994.
W. Kimryn Rathmell is an American physician-scientist whose work focuses on the research and treatment of patients with kidney cancers. She is the Hugh Jackson Morgan Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), and Physician-in-Chief for Vanderbilt University Adult Hospital and Clinics in Nashville, Tennessee. On November 17, 2023, Rathmell was announced as the next Director of the National Cancer Institute.
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