Gordon J. Freeman, PhD (Damon Runyon Fellow ‘79-‘81), of Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, was named one of four recipients of the 2014 William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Tumor Immunology. He is recognized for his contributions to the discovery of the programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) receptor pathway, a new immune system checkpoint that has been shown in clinical studies to be a highly promising target in cancer immunotherapy. PD-1 inhibitor drugs are effective in treating several types of deadly cancer, including melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer, head and neck cancer, bladder cancer, and kidney cancer.
