Alumnus Receives Prestigious Cancer Research Award

Harvey Mudd College 2010 Outstanding Alumnus Jack Cuzick ’70 has received the 2015 American Cancer Society Medal of Honor in the category of clinical research for his contributions to the field of biostatistics, epidemiology and clinical medicine. The highest honor bestowed by the society, the award was presented at a special ceremony Sept. 30 in Washington, D.C.

Head of the Centre for Cancer Prevention and John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at Queen Mary University of London, Cuzick has been a leading epidemiologist working in cancer screening and prevention for more than three decades and has played a major role in developing chemopreventive breast cancer medications that reduce risk in women with a high chance of developing the disease.

“Our Medal of Honor recipients truly embody what the American Cancer Society is all about,” said Gary Reedy, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society. “Each of this year’s recipients has significantly contributed to the advancement and impact of our collective efforts to eliminate cancer as a major health problem.”

Cuzick is internationally known for advancing the field of breast cancer chemoprevention through his early and path-breaking work with tamoxifen. He also led research on the International Breast Cancer Intervention Study (IBIS-I), which was used to develop one of the leading breast cancer risk prediction models and established mammographic density as a modifiable risk biomarker.

More recently Cuzick led the IBIS-II, a large international breast cancer prevention trial investigating the aromatase inhibitor anastrozole. Aromatase inhibitors block the production of estrogen and slow cancer growth. As such, they are potentially more effective in both the treatment of breast cancer—where they represent a major advantage over estrogen receptor-antagonists like tamoxifen, which do not actually lower estrogen levels—and as an agent for chemoprevention. Cuzick’s research found that five years of treatment with anastrozole reduced the risk of breast cancer by 53 percent in postmenopausal women at high risk for developing the disease, supporting it as a first choice for preventative indications.

Cuzick also directs the CRUK Epidemiology, Math and Statistics Unit at the Wolfson Institute of Preventative Medicine. Involved primarily in clinical trials and epidemiology, the unit conducts research into the prevention of cancer with particular focus on screening, early detection and chemoprevention. Cuzick’s research areas include design and analysis of disease prevention studies, multi-arm clinical trials, asymptotic theory and limit theorems.

In July 2015, Cuzick was awarded the Robert Sutherland Award for Excellence in Translational Research by the Australia and New Zealand Breast Cancer Trials Group, also for his work on the IBIS trials. This award honors translational researchers and their achievements and contributions to improved patient outcomes. He also received the American Association for Cancer Research Cancer Prevention Prize in 2012, among other distinctions.

Cuzick worked previously at Oxford and Columbia universities and is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal Statistical Society, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. He is the author of more than 500 peer-reviewed papers and has been published in major medical journals.

A Harvey Mudd mathematics alumnus, Cuzick received a master of science in mathematics from University of London (1971) and PhD in mathematics from Claremont Graduate University (1974).