Professors Ji Heon-yeong, Park Deok-woo, and Kim Nam-guk Receive the 21st Pfizer Medical Award

The recipients of the 21st Pfizer Medical Research Award are Professor Ji Heon-Young of the Department of Pharmacology at Yonsei University College of Medicine (Basic Medical Science Award), Professor Park Deok-Woo of the Department of Internal Medicine at Ulsan University College of Medicine, Asan Medical Center, Seoul (Clinical Medical Science Award), and Professor Kim Nam-Guk of the Department of Convergence Medicine at Ulsan University College of Medicine, Asan Medical Center, Seoul (Translational Medical Science Award).

The 21st Pfizer Medical Award recipients are Professor Ji Heon-Young of the Department of Pharmacology, Yonsei University College of Medicine (Basic Medical Science Award), Professor Park Deok-Woo of the Department of Internal Medicine, Asan Medical Center, Ulsan University College of Medicine (Clinical Medical Science Award), and Professor Kim Nam-Guk of the Department of Convergence Medicine, Asan Medical Center, Ulsan University College of Medicine (Translational Medical Science Award) (from left)
[Photo by Korea Pfizer Pharmaceuticals]

The Pfizer Medical Research Award is a pure medical science award organized by the Korean Academy of Medical Sciences and sponsored by Pfizer Korea. It was established in 1999, the 30th anniversary of Pfizer Korea’s founding, to support the development of the domestic medical community and fulfill corporate social responsibility. Each year, outstanding papers published within two years from the award year are evaluated in three categories: basic medical science, clinical medical science, and translational medical science. The evaluation criteria include excellence, creativity, scientific merit, and contribution, and the most outstanding papers are selected and announced as awardees. To date, the Pfizer Medical Research Award has discovered and supported a total of 52 medical scientists, encouraging and supporting a wide range of research from basic research to practical medical studies by domestic medical scientists, and its prestige has been increasingly recognized over the years.

Professor Ji Heon-Young of Yonsei University, selected as the recipient of the Basic Medical Science Award, was the first to confirm the cell adhesion-suspension transition (AST) paradigm and elucidated the roles of cell adhesion regulators in circulating tumor cell formation and cancer metastasis. While the phenomenon of solid tumor cells transitioning into circulating tumor cells remains a challenge, he established a paradigm different from the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) theory, which explains the reprogramming phenomenon between epithelial and mesenchymal cell morphologies, and identified key factors mediating this process, including transcription factors previously known to be specific to blood cells. Professor Ji’s research team published their paper in the top international journal in cancer biology, Molecular Cancer. He was recognized for his outstanding research achievements based on molecular cell biology and genetics, contributing to solving difficult problems in life sciences and conducting research on cancer and sensory organs, leading to his selection as the Basic Medical Science Award recipient.

Professor Park Deok-Woo of Ulsan University, the recipient of the Clinical Medical Science Award, presented the first clinical evidence that there is no significant difference in the incidence of major cardiac events or mortality between high-risk patients who underwent regular stress function tests after coronary artery stent procedures and those who did not, based on a large-scale clinical study. Prior to this study, all high-risk patients who received coronary artery stent procedures underwent stress function tests such as exercise stress electrocardiography and pharmacologic stress echocardiography. The results of this study are expected to be reflected in global standard guidelines and have a direct impact on actual patient care. This research was highly regarded for its public interest significance and was published in the globally prestigious medical journal, The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Professor Park was recognized for confirming clinical evidence in cardiovascular disease and elevating the level of cardiology in Korea to a global standard, leading to his selection as an awardee.

Professor Kim Nam-Guk of Ulsan University was honored with the Translational Medical Science Award. Instead of using the conventional method of training on specific diseases, Professor Kim utilized a deep learning model for anomaly detection by training on brain computed tomography (CT) data from healthy individuals to detect diseases, confirming the potential of a severity classification (triage) system. The application of anomaly detection allowed for more accurate detection of various diseases in emergency patients and significantly reduced interpretation time. The research results were published in the scientific journal Nature Communications. Professor Kim was selected as the Translational Medical Science Award recipient for his contribution to medical artificial intelligence research, confirming a diagnostic system applicable in emergency situations with many variables, and proposing alternatives to unmet clinical needs using domestic data, thereby discovering new methods for patient treatment in AI diagnostics.

The 21st Pfizer Medical Research Award ceremony is scheduled to be held on the 1st of next month at the Grand Ballroom of Baekyang-ro Plaza Hall, Yonsei University. Each awardee will receive 50 million KRW per category (a total of 150 million KRW) and a plaque.

Wang Gyu-Chang, President of the Korean Academy of Medical Sciences, stated, “All the research awarded the 21st Pfizer Medical Research Award presents excellent research outcomes that not only improve the domestic medical environment but also provide solutions to globally unmet needs, adding innovation and enabling leaps forward in the medical field. We hope that through the Pfizer Medical Research Award, we can continue to discover and honor domestic medical scientists who contribute to elevating Korea’s medical status to a global level and inspire their research enthusiasm so that medical research in Korea can be more actively pursued.”

Oh Dong-Wook, CEO of Pfizer Korea, said, “We deeply appreciate the Pfizer Medical Research Award, which has been ongoing for 21 years, for discovering outstanding research achievements of medical scientists and supporting valuable research activities that contribute to the advancement of domestic medicine and improvement of patient treatment environments. We will continue various activities to further raise the level of Korean medicine and rapidly expand medical possibilities together with domestic medical scientists.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.