Georgetown Honors Professor Whose Research in Breast Cancer Saved Lives

On April 8, Georgetown honored Dr. Marc Lippman, a professor whose breakthroughs in breast cancer research have led to life-saving treatments for millions of patients, at its annual spring faculty convocation.

Lippman received the President's Award for Distinguished Scholar-Teachers, which recognizes faculty members for their excellence in teaching and scholarship. Lippman, a medical oncologist and professor of oncology and medicine at the School of Medicine, is also renowned for his mentorship, training more than two dozen faculty members at Georgetown and generations of Hoyas.

"Dr. Marc E. Lippman … is one of the most influential figures in breast cancer research over the past half century," said Interim Provost Soyica Colbert. "His groundbreaking work on estrogen receptors, growth factors and hormonal regulation of breast cancer transformed the field."

Georgetown also recognized 63 faculty members who are celebrating their 20-year anniversary at the university, as well as John McNeill, Distinguished University Professor, who presented the event's annual Life of Learning address.

Lippman's seminal discovery dates back to his years at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), where he led the breast cancer section and served as a senior investigator from 1974 to 1988.

Lippman discovered that the hormone estrogen plays a significant role in breast cancer development and growth.

"I decided I wanted to make models of breast cancer, which we could treat in test tubes and bottles, and show that they would respond to estrogens. I got extremely lucky," he said. "As a result, those models have been used by thousands of investigators throughout the world, and it was the basis for which we could develop all kinds of approaches to breast cancer."

In the years since, drugs like tamoxifen and others were developed and are now routinely used to block estrogen or the production of estrogen in treating breast cancer.

These treatments have had enormous success: The life expectancy in 1950 for breast cancer was less than 25%. Today, life expectancy is above 90%.

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Following his career at NCI, Lippman joined Georgetown as the director of the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center from 1988 to 2001. After leaving to lead cancer centers at the University of Michigan and the University of Miami, Lippman returned to Georgetown in 2018. He rejoined Georgetown Lombardi as an oncologist and a professor of oncology and internal medicine.

"Our distinguished scholar-teachers embody excellence in Georgetown's dual mission of mentorship and research," said Interim President Robert M. Groves. "Marc, congratulations on this well-deserved recognition by your colleagues."

Lippman has trained six current directors of NCI-designated Cancer Centers. He has also mentored many Georgetown faculty, many of whom he recruited from NCI, and student researchers who went on to pursue careers in research and medicine.

After a half-century of progress, Lippman still feels motivated to make more inroads in breast cancer research. A clinical trial testing a new therapy based on findings from Lippman's lab is now underway at Georgetown. The study will determine if the drug can prevent recurrence in women diagnosed with breast cancer that spread locally.

"We've made a difference," he said of his lab's work. "It's wonderful, but there's a tremendous amount to go. I mean, we could make breast cancer go away. That's within our grasp, and that would be satisfying."

Honoring an Environmental Historian

John McNeill, Distinguished University Professor, presented the Life of Learning address at faculty convocation on April 8.

After Lippman's award, John McNeill, Distinguished University Professor and a renowned environmental history scholar, presented the Life of Learning address, which invites the audience to reflect on a life dedicated to inquiry. He opened his address with two "strange things" about his career as a historian.

"First, I have no regional or chronological specialization. … Second, my path was guided by people in disciplines that I never studied, specifically ecology and geology."

McNeill described his early foray into history, majoring in it at Swarthmore College and then earning his Ph.D. in Canadian history at Duke University in 1976. Upon completing his degree, he was "flamboyantly unsuccessful in the job market," he said.

"I decorated my walls … with rejection letters. It made me determined to outwork - and to try to outshine - those who got the jobs I didn't get."

McNeill got a job as a roofer while teaching Western civilization at Duke. His luck turned when he was hired as a researcher with ecologists at Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, where he began studying environmental changes over time, setting him on a path toward environmental history.

"I came to see that I could turn my research skills towards environmental questions, big ones, with historical dimensions that historians did not know about," he said. "My ongoing flamboyant failure in the academic job market had begun to pay dividends that I still collect today."

In 1985, McNeill began teaching in the School of Foreign Service and the College of Arts & Sciences.

After teaching history at Goucher College, McNeill joined Georgetown in 1985, where he has taught in the School of Foreign Service and the College of Arts & Science's Department of History ever since. In the years following, he authored or edited more than 20 books, including Something New Under the Sun, which chronicles the environmental history of the 20th century, and most recently, The Webs of Humankind.

He is a member of the Anthropocene Working Group of the International Union of the Geological Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a former president of both the American Society for Environmental History and the American Historical Association. He has also received two Fulbright awards, a Guggenheim, and fellowships from the MacArthur and the Woodrow Wilson Center.

"John, for nearly half a century, you have modeled for us what it means to live a life of inquiry in service to the Academy," Groves said. "Your scholarship, your teaching and your care in forming the next generation of leaders have had a transformative impact on Georgetown, on the historical profession and on our collective understanding of the world."

Vicennial Awards

During faculty convocation, Georgetown also recognized 30 full-time faculty members who have served for 20 years at the university with the Vicennial Medal. Their names are below.

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Gold Medalists:

Anja Banchoff

Jacques Berlinerblau

Jennifer Bouey

Carrie Bowman Dalley

Rosa Brooks

Marc Busch

Doreen Cunningham

Rochelle Davis

Joseph Garman

Michael Green

Greg Klass

Jonathan Ladd

Leo Lefebure

Sivan Leviyang

Joanna Lewis

James Li

Chandra Manning

Abraham Newman

Felicitas Opwis

Smita Parkhe

John Partridge

Michael Plankey

Iwona Sadowska

Rima Sirota

Vicki Wei Tang

Debora Thompson

Sona Vasudevan

Francis Vella

C.R. Vinayaka

Heather Weger

In addition, Georgetown recognized 33 part-time faculty members who have served for 20 years. Their names are below:

Silver Medalists

Ridgeway Addison

Donald Ayer

Barry Barbash

Gregory Brown

Robert Burleson

Ivan Cheung

Teresa Clare

Andrea Durkin

Lee Eiden

Ellen Gorman

Bradley Holst

Carter Hood

Arthur House

James Howard

Scott Hutchison

Noureddine Jebnoun

Frederick Jenney

Barbara Kotschwar

Brian Kritz

Jimmy Lynn

Joseph Micallef

Larry Millstein

Anne Moran

David Mosher

Miguel Noyola

John Oliver

John Paliga

Jonathan Pitt

Borzu Sabahi

James Schoettler

Tammy Schultz

Mary Vasquez

Mark Vlasic