Dr. Allan Conney

Dr. Allan H. Conney (1930-2013) was a worldrenowned pharmacologist and cancer researcher who made seminal discoveries in the molecular mechanisms of enzyme induction, drug metabolism, carcinogen activation, and cancer prevention. Conney was born in Chicago on March 23, 1930. He received his B.S. in pharmacy (1952) and his M.S. (1954) and Ph.D. (1956) in oncology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Recognized with the prestigious GHA Clowes Award from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and later elected into the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Conney spent decades researching the effects of environmental chemicals that act as triggers in the formation of cancer. He published 539 articles of original work in scientific literature and was featured in journals such as Cancer Research, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA (PNAS), Nature, and Science. He served as President of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and served on editorial boards of the PNAS, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, and Molecular Pharmacology. Well-known for his pioneering research into the anticancer properties of exercise and caffeine in relation to skin cancer, and as an advocate for individualized cancer prevention and treatment, Conney was recognized for his achievements with the Dewitt S. Goodman Memorial Award from the AACR, the Arnold J. Lehman Award from the Society of Toxicology, and the IBM-Princess Takamatsu Cancer Research Fund Lecturer Award and supported by an Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Cancer Institute. He established the Department of Chemical Biology in the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy and founded the Laboratory for Cancer Research at Rutgers University. He received international recognition for his research by having a laboratory named in his honor — the Allan H. Conney Laboratory for Anticancer Research at Guangdong University of Technology in Guangzhou, China. He was among the seven most cited scientists in the world in the field of pharmacology from 1965 to 1978, according to the Science Citation Index. During the same period, Conney was among the top 40 most cited scientists in all fields of science.