WILLIAM DAMESHEK PRIZE

The William Dameshek Prize, named for the late William Dameshek, MD, a past president of ASH and the original editor of Blood, recognizes an early- or mid-career individual who has made a recent outstanding contribution to the field of hematology.

ASH will recognize Ami Bhatt, MD, PhD, of Stanford Medicine, with the 2024 William Dameshek Prize. Dr. Bhatt is being honored for pioneering the development and application of genomic approaches to studying the microbiome — work that has improved outcomes for many human diseases. She has applied microbiomics in the clinical setting to study the impact of gut decontamination on transplant outcomes and has co-led efforts to study the microbiome in the context of evolving graft-versus-host disease prophylaxis strategies. Dr. Bhatt successfully linked bloodstream infections and outcomes in transplant patients to characteristics within the gut microbiome and uncovered a link between prolonged gastrointestinal SARS-CoV-2 viral shedding and gastrointestinal symptoms, among other major findings. Her unique and highly collaborative work has broad implications across biomedicine, with her landmark research resulting in a broad expansion of knowledge on microbial enzymes that can be developed for gene therapy. 

HENRY M. STRATTON MEDAL

The Henry M. Stratton Medal is named after the late Henry Maurice Stratton, co-founder of Grune and Stratton, the medical publishing house that first published ASH’s journal Blood. The prize honors two senior investigators whose contributions to both basic and clinical/ translational hematology research are well recognized and have taken place over a period of several years.

ASH will recognize Douglas Cines, MD, of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, with the 2024 Henry M. Stratton Medal for basic science. Dr. Cines is being honored for more than 40 years of research discoveries that have led to significant increases in the understanding and treatment of thrombocytopenic disorders, including immune thrombocytopenia, heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), and thrombocytopenia in pregnancy. Dr. Cines’ main research interest is immunothrombosis, or how the immune system and coagulation interact. He was instrumental in identifying the role of endothelial cells — which help regulate clotting and breakdown of blood clots — as targets of immune injury in lupus, HIT, and antiphospholipid syndrome, thereby providing a rationale for the connection of these disorders to thrombosis. 

ASH will recognize Katherine High, MD, of The Rockefeller University, with the 2024 Henry M. Stratton Medal for translational/clinical science. Dr. High is being honored for spearheading the development of a gene therapy for hemophilia B, approved earlier this year by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Health Canada. This success comes after more than two decades of challenging research during which she directly contributed to the understanding of DNA defects in hemophilia B, factor VII, and factor X, as well as performed several first-of-their-kind clinical trials in gene therapy, including the first intramuscular and intravascular administrations of an adeno-associated viral vector. These studies resulted in adverse events that were not predicted by animal studies, the basis for which she unraveled in bedside-to-bench laboratory investigations. Dr. High’s research interests, sparked by a chemistry set she was gifted at age 10, also extend to inherited blindness. She was instrumental in developing a gene therapy to restore vision loss in patients with this condition, the first-ever gene therapy for genetic disease to be approved by the FDA in 2017.