Each year ASGCT gives out several awards to members of the Society. These awards include the Outstanding Achievement Award, the Outstanding New Investigator Awards, and the Excellence in Research Awards.

Outstanding Achievement Award

This award began in 2008 and recognizes an ASGCT Active Member who has achieved a pioneering research success, a specific high impact accomplishment, or a lifetime of significant scientific contributions to the fields of gene and/or cell therapy. Only ASGCT Active Members can submit nominations for this award. The ASGCT Advisory Council reviews all nominations submitted by members, and then makes a recommendation to the ASGCT Board of Directors.

ASGCT is pleased to recognize Katherine A. High, MD as the 2010 Outstanding Achievement Award recipient. Dr. High presented a lecture on her work during the 13th Annual Meeting in May, 2010 entitled Gene Therapy for Genetic Disease: Hemophilia as a Paradigm.

Previous recipients of this award are:

Outstanding New Investigator Awards

The ASGCT Board of Directors and the ASGCT Advisory Council initiated the Outstanding New Investigator Awards in the fall of 2002. Each year the Advisory Council puts out a call for nominees for this award. Only Active ASGCT Members can nominate someone for the award. Nominees must be Active Members of the Society and 7 or fewer years out from their first full-time assistant professorship or equivalent position. Candidates also must be independent investigators conducting original research in basic science, technology development and/or clinical translation in the field of gene and/or cell therapy. The Advisory Council reviews all nominations and recommends 2 to 4 qualified candidates to the ASGCT Board of Directors. The award winners receive a $1,000 cash award and present their work during the Outstanding New Investigators Symposium at the ASGCT Annual Meeting.

The 2010 Outstanding New Investigator award winners were:

• Alessandra Biffi, MD, San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy (HSR-TIGET), Milan, Italy
  Rendering Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation Efficacious for the Treatment of Lyssomal Disorders
   
• Kevin V. Morris, PhD, Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA
  Utilizing the Endogenous Long Non-Coding RNA Pathway in Human Cells to Transcriptionally Modulate Gene Expression
   
• Bakhos A. Tannous, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA
  Ex-Vivo Monitoring of In Vivo Gene and Cell Therapy
  
  
• Charles P. Venditti, MD, PhD, National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda, MD
  Gene Therapy for Methylmalonic Acidemia (MMA)

Excellence in Research Awards - For Students and Postdoctoral Fellows

Each year the Society gives out Excellence in Research Awards to Associate Members of the Society who have received the highest abstracts scores from the Abstract Review process. The number of awards given each year is based on the funds available from Corporate Supporters. Award winners receive a $500 cash award and a travel award for the ASGCT Annual Meeting. A travel award of $500 is given to domestic winners and a $600 travel award is given to international winners.

The Excellence in Research Award Winners for 2010 were:

• Jennifer E. Adair
  Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA
  Efficient Engraftment of MGMTP140K Gene-Modified CD34+ Cells Following Nonmyeloablative BCNU Conditioning in Patiens with Glioblastoma
   
• Melissa A. Badding
  University of Rochester School of Medicine, Rochester, NY
  Transcription Factor Binding by Plasmid DNA Is Needed for Interaction with Microtubules and Trafficking in Cells
   
• Richard Gabriel
  National Center for Tumor Diseases, German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany
  Determining the Specificity of Zinc Finger Nucleases by Analyzing Insertion Site Distribution of Integrase Defective Lentiviral Vectors (IDLV) Trapped into DNA Double Strand Breaks
   
• Eirini P. Papapetrou
  Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY
  Therapeutic Transgene Expression in Patient-Specific iPS Cells after Selection of “Safe Harbors” for Lentiviral Vector Integration
   
• Marco Ranzani
  San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy (HSR-TIGET), Milan, Italy
  Sensitive In Vivo Models To Assess the Risk of Insertional Mutagenesis in the Liver upon Vector Systemic Delivery
   
• Axel Schambach
  Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany
  A Novel Lentiviral Expression System Reveals Patchwork Colony Formation during Reprogramming to Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells