OUR RESEARCH

Robert F. Gagel Discovery Award

The Robert F. Gagel ITOG Discovery Award supports innovative scientific proposals with clear translational implications aimed at developing novel or improved treatments for thyroid cancer. The award is designed to advance promising research that bridges laboratory discovery and clinical application.

Nominate
Funding

$100,000 over two years ($50,000 per year)

Focus

Translational science

Review Process

Applications are evaluated by the ITOG Correlative Sciences Committee

Selection

The Selection Committee is organized by the Correlative Sciences Committee Chair

2026 Cycle

The 2026 submission period has closed. The recipient will be announced at the 2026 ITOG Annual Meeting.

Our Most Recent Recipient

Robert F. Gagel Discovery Award Winner

2024 Recipient

Congratulations to
James A.  Fagin, MD

Head, Division of Subspecialty Medicine; Member, Human Oncology & Pathogenesis Program
Memorial Sloan Kettering

“Leveraging therapeutic vulnerabilities induced by cGAS–STING activation in anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC)”

Previous Recipients

2021 Recipient

Herbert Chen, MD

Chair, Department of Surgery; Professor of Biomedical Engineering
University of Alabama at Birmingham

“Pharmacological upregulation of SSTR2 for imaging and therapy of medullary thyroid cancer”

2019 Recipient

Carmelo Nucera, MD, PhD

Head, Thyroid Cancer Research Program
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center / Harvard Medical School

“Engineering a new mouse model of a thyroid-specific lincRNA in BRAFV600E papillary thyroid carcinoma”

2017 Recipient

Sareh Parangi, MD

General Surgeon, Endocrine Surgeon
Chair of Surgery at Newton-Wellesley Hospital
Director MGH Thyroid Cancer Research Laboratory

“Investigation of the role of myeloid-derived suppressor cells in the response to targeted therapies in advanced thyroid cancer”

2015 Recipient (Inaugural Award)

Yariv Houvras, MD

Assistant Professor of Medicine
Weill Cornell Medical College

“Dissecting the mechanism of kinase inhibition in thyroid cancer”

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