Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) biology and Wnt developmental signaling highlight research endeavors of SCBA award winners

At the 2011 biennial international meeting held in Guangzhou, China, the Society of Chinese Bioscientists in America (SCBA) recognized two of our finest members for their scientific accomplishments and future potential in biomedical research. SCBA awarded its Presidential Award to Dr. Mien-Chie Hung (MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, USA) and its Outstanding Young Investigator Award to Dr. Yingzi Yang (National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA). I have previously written on the importance of prizes/awards for encouraging and rewarding research endeavors [1]. In this months Cell and Bioscience, we have the privilege of publishing two review articles from Hung [2] and Yang [3] reprising their contributions to cancer and developmental biology and posing future directions for their respective scientific fields.Professor Mien-Chie Hung is an internationally renowned cancer biologist. He graduated from the National Taiwan University with his bachelors degree in 1973, and received his Ph.D. degree from Brandeis University in 1983. After training with Robert Weinberg at MIT, he joined the faculty of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in 1986 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Tumor Biology. Professor Hung is currently the Chairman of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Oncology, and the Vice President for Basic Research at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas.Amongst his many honors, Professor Hung is an Academician of Academia Sinica, Taiwan.Hung is a pioneering leader in our understanding of the normal biology and abnormal cancer transforming functions of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) family members. He is well-recognized to have made the unexpected, but seminal, discovery that receptor tyrosine kinases like EGFR and HER2/neu can be found in the nucleus, can bind to specific DNA sequences, and can exert nuclear transcriptional activity. In his article [2] in this months Cell and Bioscience, Hung r