PHILADELPHIA – Nancy A. Speck, PhD, the John W. Eckman Professor in Medical Science II and chair of the department of Cell and Developmental Biology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, has been named the 2025 recipient of the E. Donnall Thomas Lecture and Prize from the American Society of Hematology (ASH). The award presentation and lecture will take place at the ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition, to be held Dec. 7-10, 2025, in Orlando, FL.
ASH is the world's largest professional society for clinicians and scientists around the world who are working to conquer blood diseases. The award, part of ASH’s prestigious honorific awards program, is named after the late Nobel Prize laureate and past ASH president E. Donnall Thomas. The E. Donnall Thomas Lecture and Prize is intended to recognize pioneering research achievements in hematology that have represented a paradigm shift or significant discovery in the field.
A leader in hematology research
Speck is honored for her pivotal work in hematopoiesis (the process of blood cell production) and leukemogenesis (the process of leukemia development). Her discovery of the transcription factor complex “core binding factor” has enabled significant conceptual insights into embryonic blood cell formation. One subunit of core binding factor is the transcription factor RUNX1, encoded by a gene responsible for blood cell creation. This factor is mutated in individuals with a familial platelet disorder with associated myeloid malignancy. This condition predisposes patients to developing certain blood cancers, including myelodysplastic syndromes and leukemia.
“Dr. Speck’s research has provided critical knowledge to help us understand how certain blood cancers and other blood disorders develop,” said Robert Vonderheide, MD, DPhil, director of the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania. “We are glad to have such a brilliant hematology researcher on our team and are pleased to see her recognized with one of the highest honors from ASH.”
Speck is also co-leader of the Hematologic Malignancies Program at the Abramson Cancer Center and is an investigator in the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute. She earned her PhD in biochemistry from Northwestern University in 1983 and completed postdoctoral research fellowships in retroviral pathogenesis and eukaryotic gene regulation at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and MIT. Speck joined Penn in 2008 and has served as chair of Cell and Developmental Biology since 2015.
With a career spanning more than 40 years, her work has been published in more than 160 peer-reviewed academic journals. She has served as a reviewer for leading journals such as Blood, Nature, Nature Genetics, Cell, Stem Cell, Cancer Cell, Science and PNAS. She has also served on and chaired study sections at the National Institutes of Health, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the American Society of Hematology, and the Department of Defense. Her numerous awards include the Leukemia Society of America Scholar Award, the Fogarty International Center Senior Fellow Award, the 2015 Henry M. Stratton Medal for Basic Science from the American Society of Hematology, and the 2018 Donald Metcalf Award from the International Society for Experimental Hematology. She was elected into the National Academy of Sciences in 2019.
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