Dr. Antoni Ribas, a renowned physician-scientist and professor of medicine in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, was selected by Agilent Technologies for their prestigious Thought Leader Award. The award recognizes Ribas for his research in cancer genomics and immunotherapy and comes with a $600,000 gift and research supplies to support Ribas and his laboratory.
The Thought Leader Award is given to influential thought leaders in the life sciences, diagnostics and chemical analysis to help promote fundamental scientific advancements. The award will help Ribas intensify his research efforts in developing new treatment strategies for the many people diagnosed with melanoma who do not respond to current therapies.
Ribas, who is also the director of the tumor immunology program at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy Center at UCLA, is implementing next-generation genomics solutions to identify mechanisms and biomarkers associated with resistance and response to immunotherapy in patients with melanoma.
The discovery of new biomarkers can influence the process of patient selection for immunotherapeutic treatments and could help scientists identify new alternative drugs targets.
Agilent Technologies, a spin-off from Hewlett-Packard, is a public research, development and manufacturing company that provides laboratories worldwide with instruments, services, consumables, applications and expertise.