For Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD, FACS, receiving the Owen H. Wangensteen Scientific Forum Award at Clinical Congress 2023 in Boston, Massachusetts, may be a small moment in a momentous, outsized career.
The ACS Scientific Forum Committee gives this award to an individual who exemplifies the clinical, research, and educational achievements of a successful academic surgeon. This year, the honor will go to Dr. Bertagnolli, a world-renowned oncologic surgeon and cancer researcher who has served as director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) since October 2022.
Of Dr. Bertagnolli, her one-time resident and nominating surgical colleague Luke Funk, MD, FACS, wrote, “I can think of no individual who is more deserving of the Owen H. Wangensteen Scientific Forum dedication—the premier award honoring the absolute best of academic surgery.”
A graduate of Princeton University in New Jersey and the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City, Dr. Bertagnolli completed her surgical residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. She then spent 5 years as an assistant professor of surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City before returning to Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital as an associate professor of surgery.
In 2007, Dr. Bertagnolli became the first female chief of surgical oncology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and in 2015, she was named the Harvard Medical School Richard E. Wilson Professor of Surgery in the Field of Surgical Oncology. Throughout, she garnered a well-earned reputation for skillful and effective operations, with a special ability to excise tumors otherwise deemed inoperable.
Dr. Bertagnolli also maintained an impressive record in cancer research. Concurrent with her residency, she completed 3 years of tumor immunology research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. She received her first research grant from the NCI while at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and secured further National Institutes of Health (NIH) awards for cancer research on her return to Harvard. Dr. Bertagnolli maintained NIH and other funding for 25 years and generated several findings that have impacted cancer care.
As head of the NCI, Dr. Bertagnolli is no longer at the laboratory bench or in the clinic. Rather, she leads the institute’s ambitious effort to reduce cancer mortality by 50% within 25 years. She has emphasized that, while this goal can be approached by eliminating care disparities and fully implementing current knowledge, it also will require innovations in research, diagnosis, and treatment. More importantly, Dr. Bertagnolli has said her long-standing focus on patient care has evolved into an emphasis on amplified engagement with other institutions and the public.
“It’s crucial that we reach and engage everybody,” Dr. Bertagnolli noted when the NCI’s National Cancer Plan, developed in the first 6 months of her NCI tenure, was released.
In May 2023, US President Joe Biden nominated Dr. Bertagnolli to lead of the NIH. In a statement, President Biden called Dr. Bertagnolli “a world-class physician-scientist whose vision and leadership will ensure the NIH continues to be an engine of innovation to improve the health of the American people.”
At present, she awaits confirmation by the US Senate. If confirmed, Dr. Bertagnolli will be the second woman ever in a permanent position leading the NIH.
Like President Biden (who lost a son to cancer in 2015), Dr. Bertagnolli regards cancer as both a professional focus and a personal journey. She is not only a cancer surgeon but also a cancer patient.
Two months after starting her work as the 16th director of the NCI, she publicly stated she was undergoing breast cancer treatment.
In a statement released by the NCI, Dr. Bertagnolli said the experience affirmed her commitment to cancer patients: “Having been an oncologist my entire career, it was always—and still is—all about the patients and survivors…To anyone with cancer today: I am truly in this together with you.”
Through her innovation, skill, and compassion, Dr. Bertagnolli reflects the surgeon after whom the Scientific Forum Award is named. Owen H. Wangensteen, MD, PhD, FACS (1898-1981), had a transformative influence on the field of surgery.
In 1940, dismayed at a culture that then discouraged surgeons from publishing research findings, Dr. Wangensteen founded the Surgical Forum within the ACS to provide a place for early career surgeons to share their research and ideas. Originally a part of Clinical Congress, the Forum evolved into a publication and is now presented as the Owen H. Wangensteen, MD, FACS, Scientific Forum at Clinical Congress each year. A lifelong active ACS member, Dr. Wangensteen also served as ACS president (1959-1960). The Wangensteen Surgical Forum Award was created in 1996 to memorialize him.
