Past Recipients
2025: Francoise Galateau Salle, MD, PhD – Professor Galateau-Sallé is the Head of MESOPATH within the Department of Biopathology at the Léon Bérard Cancer Center in Lyon, France, and is internationally recognised for her expertise in malignant mesothelioma pathology and research. She has played a leading role in advancing the understanding, diagnosis, and classification of mesothelioma through her extensive contributions to pathological research and international collaborations. Professor Galateau-Sallé has been instrumental in developing standardised approaches to mesothelioma diagnosis and tumour classification and has contributed significantly to the international WHO classification of thoracic tumours. She serves on the Editorial Board of Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, is an Editorial Consultant for the European Society of Pathology, and is an expert advisor to the French National Cancer Institute. Through her leadership of MESOPATH and extensive research portfolio, she continues to make major contributions to improving the diagnosis, management, and study of mesothelioma worldwide.
2023: Hedy Lee Kindler, MD – Professor Kindler is Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago and Director of the Multidisciplinary Mesothelioma Program at the University of Chicago Medicine. She is an internationally recognised expert in malignant mesothelioma and has dedicated her career to advancing the treatment of patients with this disease through innovative clinical research and multidisciplinary care. Professor Kindler has designed and led numerous national and international clinical trials investigating novel therapies for mesothelioma, including studies that have contributed to the evolution of systemic treatment approaches and improved patient outcomes. Her research has focused on chemotherapy, targeted therapies, immunotherapy, and the development of evidence-based treatment strategies for mesothelioma. She has served as a leader within the International Mesothelioma Interest Group (iMig), including as past President, and has contributed to major international guidelines for the management of malignant pleural mesothelioma. Professor Kindler has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and is widely recognised for her leadership in mesothelioma clinical research and patient care.
2021: Anna K. Nowak, MD, PhD – Dr Nowak is a professor in the School of Medicine and Pharmacology at the University of Western Australia and Director of the National Research Centre for Asbestos Related Diseases. Dr Nowak was among the earliest researchers to demonstrate that chemotherapy and immunotherapy could be synergistic (DREAM), work that led to two early-phase clinical trials for which she served as principal investigator and motivated her portfolio of mesothelioma research. In addition, she has been instrumental in redefining image-based assessment of mesothelioma tumor response and advancing the role of PET imaging as a quantitative tool for the assessment of mesothelioma prognosis. She received the 2017 Pioneer Award from the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation, and she was named the 2018 Western Australia Cancer Researcher of the Year by Cancer Council Western Australia.
2018: Michele Carbone, MD – Dr Carbone is an expert mesothelioma pathologist and molecular biologist who has concentrated his career on this disease since 1993. His initial work focused on the potential role of the SV40 virus as a co-carcinogen in the pathogenesis of mesothelioma. Over the past decade he has pursued the vision that genetics influence environmental carcinogenesis, studied his hypothesis in remote areas of the world. Dr Carbone was instrumental in discovering that heterozygous germline BAP1 mutations modulate susceptibility to asbestos and to UV-light, thus causing mesothelioma. Dr Carbone remains extraordinarily dedicated to mesothelioma, and his contributions to both genetics and treatment strategies for this disease will continue into the future.
2016: V. Courtney Broaddus, MD – Dr Broaddus has focused on the study of the chemoresistance of mesothelioma by studying the role of apoptosis and, most recently, autophagy. For these studies, she pioneered the use of 3D models, generated from cell lines or actual human mesothelioma tumor cultured ex vivo. Her prior research explored the role of the mesothelial cell in pleural disease and the interaction of mesothelial cells with asbestos fibers. She served as iMig President from 1999 to 2002, at which time she created the website and iMig logo. Her other awards include the Pioneer Award from MARF. She currently is the John F. Murray Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Francisco and Chief of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.
2014: Raffit Hassan, MD – Dr Hassan has played a pivotal role in validating the tumor differentiation antigen mesothelin as a target for cancer therapy and development of mesothelin-targeted immunotherapy. This work laid the foundation for several mesothelin-directed agents that he is evaluating in the clinic for treatment of mesothelioma. His clinical trials using an anti-mesothelin immunotoxin have shown major tumor responses in patients with mesothelioma. Dr. Hassan currently serves as both Chief of the Solid Tumor Immunology Section and Co-Chief of the Thoracic and Gastrointestinal Oncology Branch at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). He is internationally recognized in the mesothelioma field for his outstanding contributions to translational research and clinical management.
2012: Joseph R. Testa, PhD – For the past two decades, Dr Testa has dedicated much of his research to understanding the consistent genomic alterations found in mesothelioma. Among the seminal reports by his group, Dr Testa identified a high frequency of inactivating mutations in the neurofibromatosis type 2 gene (NF2) in primary mesothelioma and derived cell lines. Most recently, Dr Testa played a critical role in the identification of BAP1 as the gene that was mutated in the germline of families. Dr Testa’s contributions to mesothelioma research have had a major impact on our understanding of the biology of this disease.
2010: Steven M Albelda, MD – An extremely creative and productive basic and clinical researcher, a mentor, and a teacher, Dr Albelda has made substantial contributions to the field of mesothelioma. After a successful early career in the study of endothelial cell biology and adhesion receptors, he established a bench-to-bedside research career concentrating on mesothelioma and lung cancer. He developed a multidisciplinary group, the Thoracic Oncology Research Laboratory (TORL), which has been extremely productive over almost 2 decades for the use of immunogene therapy in mesothelioma. In this and other novel ways, Dr Albelda continues to make outstanding contributions to this field.
2008: Brooke Mossman, PhD – Dr Mossman is an accomplished scientist, mentor, and leader in the fields of asbestos-induced carcinogenesis and mesothelioma, and her mechanistic research on the responses of mesothelial and lung epithelial cells to different asbestos types. More currently, Dr Mossman has focused on targeted preventative approaches to mesothelioma and asbestosis using inhibitors of cell signaling and survival pathways that she has elucidated in her research on asbestos.
2006: Harvey Pass, MD – As an active surgeon, advocate, researcher, and teacher, Dr Pass has contributed in almost all arenas to progress in mesothelioma. His contributions at the bench have been related to SV40, expression arrays, and early detection; in clinical research, he helped carry out many mesothelioma treatment trials, established tissue banks, and identified biomarkers; he has published texts for families of those with mesothelioma; he has appeared before Congress to support the Ban Asbestos Bill and helped create the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation (MARF). Dr Pass is a major contributor to the understanding of mesothelioma and the care of patients with this disease.
2004: Bruce Robinson, MD – Dr Bruce Robinson has made major contributions to the field of mesothelioma, especially in the immunobiology and emerging immunotherapy and the use of serum mesothelin in the diagnosis and monitoring of mesothelioma. He has advocated for government funding of centers to advance research in asbestos-induced disease, co-founding the National Centre for Asbestos Related Diseases, with the goal of curing or preventing asbestos-related cancers. He co-founded iMig and has been part of its leadership consistently over the years
2002: Marie-Claude Jaurand, PhD – Dr Jaurand was the first recipient of the Wagner Award for her pioneering research career in mesothelioma, long before most others had even started to think about research in this area. Dr Jaurand made major contributions to understanding the physio-chemical properties of asbestos fibers and their mechanisms of genotoxicity for mesothelial cells as well as in studies of the biology of human mesothelioma. Through her foresight and generosity, she co-founded iMig and thereby advanced the field globally.
