Sylvester Researcher Earns Prestigious Columbia University Award

MIAMI, FLORIDA (Sept. 20, 2023) – A researcher with Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine has been selected to receive a prestigious honor from Columbia University.

Glen N. Barber, PhD, Sylvester’s internationally known cell biologist who chairs UM’s Department of Cell Biology, will be awarded the 2023 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia for outstanding contributions to basic research in biology and biochemistry.

Barber is the first UM faculty member to receive this award, and more than 50% of previous honorees have gone on to win the Nobel Prize. The award, which carries a $10,000 prize was presented to Barber and fellow recipient, James Chen, at a recognition dinner in New York City.

Barber is being honored for his transformational research discovery known as STING (stimulator of interferon genes), a pivotal pathway controlling immune responses to infections and inflammation that also plays a vitally important role in triggering anti-tumor T-cell activity.   

Since making the discovery in 2008, Barber and his team have conducted extensive research into STING signaling and made significant discoveries that have spawned efforts to design novel drugs that target this pathway for new treatments of various diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, systemic lupus and, more recently, leukemia and other cancers.

“This award is a tremendous honor for which I am both humbled and grateful,” Barber said. “I will be accepting it on behalf of many colleagues, past and present, whose contributions have been invaluable to our collective success.”

The Louisa Gross Horwitz prize was established at the bequest of the late S. Gross Horwitz and is named to honor his mother, the daughter of academic trauma surgeon Samuel D. Gross. The prize was first awarded in 1967. 

Read more about this award on the InventUm Blog.  

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