Titia de Lange and Stephen Elledge Receive Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research

Titia de Lange and Stephen Elledge, both Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholars in Aging, along with William Kaelin, Jr. and Xiaodong Wang, are recipients of the first Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research awarded by the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center for major accomplishments leading to the basic understanding and treatment of cancer. de Lange is honored for her discoveries of proteins that bind telomeres and for describing the components of the proteins that maintain the length of the chromosomal ends. Elledge is honored for his identification of a system that helps cells sense and respond to DNA damage and for discovering major components of a protein complex that targets other proteins in the cell for degradation. Kaelin is honored for discovering the mechanism used by VHL to protect against tumors. Wang identified an important biochemical step in programmed cell death in mammalian cells. The $125,000 prize will be shared by the four recipients.