Calabasas scientist wins major award

Genhong Cheng

Genhong Cheng, a scientist who lives in Calabasas and works at UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center, has won the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of America’s Scholar Award, one of the organization’s most prestigious honors for individual researchers.

Cheng, who has a doctorate in cell biology, will receive $500,000 over five years to support his investigation of chemotherapy resistance in cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma.

Cheng said that some cancers become resistant to chemotherapy (medicines used to treat cancers) when they have relapsed.

"I am trying to understand this and trying to see if there’s any way to prevent it," he said. "The award is just a starting point," he added.

"In our laboratory, we have found that many kinds of chemotherapy commonly used in the clinic can actually activate an alternative cell survival pathway that protects cancer cells from attack by anti-cancer drugs. By blocking this cell survival pathway, we can significantly weaken cancer cells’ abilities to withstand chemotherapy," said Cheng. He’s also an assistant professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics at the UCLA College of Letters and Science.

Cheng said he also is studying the use of certain anti-inflammatory drugs in the field of immunology.

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society gives scholar awards to researchers who conduct original research on leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma. A national field of several hundred researchers competed for this year’s awards.

UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center is one of the top 10 in the country, said Cheng. The center’s activities range from basic research to clinical trials, he said.

Born in China, Cheng came to the United States after college. He earned his Ph.D. at New York’s Einstein College of Medicine. He also was a post-doctorate fellow at Rockerfeller University in New York and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Cheng started at UCLA in 1996, and moved to Calabasas in 1977, where he resides with his wife, Wi Fan, and their daughter, Lucy, 9, and son, David, 6.

—Sharon Makokian