2000 Recipients

For development of Abl kinase inhibitors for use in the treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia.

Alex Matter is CEO of the Experimental Therapeutics Centre since 2009 and since 2012 CEO of the newly created D3 platform, A*STAR, Singapore. Previously, he had spent five and a half years as Director of the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases (NITD), from October 2003 to February 2009. Prior to this role, Dr. Matter was Global Head of Oncology Research for Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation. Dr. Matter played an important role in the success of several anticancer drugs, including Gleevec/Glivec^® and more recently, Tasigna^®, building and leading the teams that discovered these and several other anticancer drugs as well as one HIV protease inhibitor (Reyataz^®) that is marketed by another company.

Dr. Matter received his medical degree from the University of Basel. He also had fellowships at the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Swiss Academy for Medical Sciences. He has published more than 100 scientific articles and several book chapters in the area of oncology and hematology. He is emeritus Professor of the Medical Faculty of the University Basel and an Honorary Adjunct Professor of the Department of Pharmacology, YLL School of Medicine, NUS in Singapore.

He is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research, the National Medical Research Council in Singapore, and the Board of Curiox, a Singapore-based start up company. He is also a chair/member of several Scientific Advisory Boards. He is an elected member of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences.

Dr. Matter is the recipient of the Life-time Achievement Award from IBC Life Sciences, the 13th Warren-Alpert prize and the AACR-Bruce F. Cain Memorial Award. Most recently he was awarded the 2013 Szent-Györgyi Prize from the National Foundation for Cancer Research.