2001 Alton Ochsner Award Relating Smoking and Health

The Selection Committee of the Alton Ochsner Award Relating Smoking and Health is pleased to announce that Dietrich Hoffmann, PhD, of the Naylor Dana Institute for Disease Prevention, American Health Foundation, Valhalla, NY, and Stephen C. Hecht, PhD, Wallin Professor of Cancer Prevention, of the University of Minnesota Cancer Center, Minneapolis, MN, have been selected to share the 16^th Annual Ochsner Award.

Dr. Hoffmann has been a pioneer in the field of identifying and characterizing specific agents that produce cancer. His early studies demonstrated that tobacco-specific nitrosamines have a powerful ability to induce cancer in cells. His research on mechanisms in experimentally produced cancer has contributed importantly to the basic knowledge of the initiation of cancer.

Dr. Hecht, who in his earlier years worked with Dr. Hoffmann in the laboratory of the American Health Foundation, conclusively demonstrated that nicotine is transformed into nitrosamines during the smoking process. He then demonstrated that nitrosamines bind to the DNA within cells in order to initiate the process in the cancer-affected cells.

Prior recipients of the Ochsner Award have been honored for work demonstrating important relationships between tobacco and lung cancer, head and neck cancer, emphysema, abnormal lung function, and other diseases including arteriosclerosis and coronary artery disease, as well as nicotine addiction.

The Alton Ochsner Award recognizes exemplary scientific research achievements that provide major insights into the biological mechanisms that relate tobacco smoking and human disease. The $15,000 award will be shared this year between both recipients. The awardees will each receive a special medallion and scroll at the Annual Convocation ceremonies of the American College of Chest Physicians during its scientific sessions in Philadelphia on November 4, 2001.

The Selection Committee is comprised of a blue ribbon panel of academicians, clinicians, and scientists who review a large number of nominations in the selection process. The Award is named for the late Alton Ochsner, MD, one of the founders of the Ochsner Clinic and the Alton Ochsner Medical Foundation. Dr. Ochsner was the first person to recognize that cigarette smoking is the major causative factor underlying lung cancer. These seminal findings led to a succession of scientific studies in the United States and worldwide that ultimately resulted in the identification of the underlying mechanisms associated with tobacco addiction and diseases related to smoking. This led to the major efforts that are presently aimed at reducing cigarette smoking by federal and state governments to reduce illnesses and deaths from this major devastating scourge.