The American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC) announced that Leslie M. Shaw, PhD, Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, received the Association’s 2013 Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine. The Award, established in 1952 and until 2007 known “Outstanding Contributions to Clinical Chemistry Award,” is bestowed annually. It is considered the premier award of the Association and is granted as a "lifetime achievement" award for contributions to the field of clinical chemistry. Individuals selected for this award have made significant contributions in all aspects of clinical chemistry, particularly service, education and research; and have achieved international stature and reputation by virtue of their efforts.
Dr. Shaw is the Director of the Toxicology Laboratory and the Biomarker Research Laboratory at the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Dr. Shaw’s longstanding clinical and research interests include development and qualification of drug biomarkers, for inclusion in clinical trials, assessment of mechanisms underlying their changes over time, and in selected instances, introduction into the clinical laboratory as lab tests. He currently is Co-Director of the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative Biomarker Core and the Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative in the Bioanalytics Core at the University of Pennsylvania. For the past twelve years he has led the qualification of biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease using immunoassays and high-sensitivity mass spectrometry and is now applying these technologies to Parkinson's disease biomarkers. Dr. Shaw has co-authored close to 250 publications.
He received his undergraduate degree in Chemistry in 1962 from LeMoyne College in Syracuse, New York, which in 2012 accorded him its “Distinguished Alumni” award. He received his PhD in Biochemistry from SUNY Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse and was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in Molecular Biology at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, before he joined the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania’s William Pepper Laboratories as a Postdoctoral Fellow in 1970. He was appointed Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in 1974, became Associate Professor in 1978, and was appointed Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in 1987. From 1999-2001 he served as President of the International Association for Therapeutic Drug Monitoring and Clinical Toxicology.
The 2013 AACC Award winners were recognized during the AACC Annual Meeting at its Opening Plenary Session on Sunday, July 28, in Houston, Texas. Past recipients of the AACC Award from the University of Pennsylvania include professors emeriti of pathology and laboratory medicine, Peter Wilding, PhD, FACB, in 2001, and Donald S. Young, PhD, in 1977, as well as John G. Reinhold in 1954. The American Association for Clinical Chemistry AACC was founded in 1948 and is headquartered in Washington, DC. The AACC is a leading international medical society dedicated to improving healthcare through laboratory medicine with and counts among its members more than 8,500 clinical laboratory professionals, physicians, research scientists, and others involved in developing tests and directing laboratory operations.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
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