Arul Chinnaiyan received both PhD and MD degrees at theUniversity of Michigan Medical School in 1999. He is a cancer researcher and the recipient of the 28th annualAmerican Association for Cancer Research Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cancer Research at the annual meeting of theAACR in April 2008 in San Diego.[3] He was also the leader of a group of scientists who received the inaugural 2007American Association for Cancer Research "Team Science" Award for their discovery of gene fusions in prostate cancer.[4]
Arul Chinnaiyan received a number of other awards and prizes, including the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Clinical Scientist Award in Translational Research and of the Ramzi Cotran Young Investigator Award from theUnited States and Canadian Academy of Pathology. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.[5]
He is a member of the editorial board forOncogene.[6]
The focus of his research is molecular profiling of cancer to discover novel diagnostic markers and therapeutic targets. It is generally believed that blood cancers are caused by chromosome translocation such as Bcr-Abl in chronic myelogenous leukaemia (CML), whereas solid tumors are caused by mutations in growth or tumour suppressor genes. In research which challenges the current dogma, Arul has discovered chromosome translocation in solid prostate tumours. Arul has discovered that this translocation occurs between a male hormone related gene TMPRSS2 and transcription factors of the Erythroblast transformation specific (ETS) family.[7]
^AACR Team Science Award RecipientsArchived 10 March 2014 at theWayback Machine,American Association for Cancer Research Award citation:"In recognition of their landmark discovery of recurrent gene fusions in a majority of prostate cancers, which has profound clinical and biological implications for understanding prostate cancers, and their embodiment of team science through interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaboration."
