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Dr. Susan Band Horwitz is a Distinguished University Professor and the Rose C. Falkenstein Professor of Cancer Research. She is Co-Chair of the Department of Molecular Pharmacology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Associate Director for Therapeutics at the Albert Einstein Cancer Center. Dr. Horwitz has had a continuing interest in natural products as a source of new drugs for the treatment of cancer. Her laboratory has made Taxol, a drug isolated from the yew plant, Taxus brevifolia, a major focus of its work. Dr. Horwitz and her collaborators demonstrated that the effects of Taxol were due to a novel interaction between the drug and microtubules, the latter being essential for the pairing and segregation of chromosomes during cell division.
Dr. Horwitz is a past-president of the American Association for Cancer Research. She has received numerous honors and awards including the Barnard Medal of Distinction in 2003, the Mayor's Award for Excellence in Science & Technology in 2004, the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize from Harvard Medical School in 2005, and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Freedom to Discover Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cancer Research in 2006. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005. Dr. Horwitz received her B.A from Bryn Mawr College and her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Brandeis University. | 