ASCO awards Eduardo Vilar-Sanchez, M.D., Ph.D., for cancer prevention research | ASCO 2026

Eduardo Vilar-Sanchez, M.D., Ph.D., has been given the ASCO-American Cancer Society Cancer Prevention Award, a special award ASCO members who have made a significant contribution to cancer prevention and control research or practice, at the 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, taking place May 29 to June 2 in Chicago. Vilar-Sanchez is chair ad Interim in the department of Clinical Cancer Prevention, MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Vilar-Sanchez was given the award for his work in cancer immunoprevention and, in particular, working to understand colorectal carcinogenesis. “We want to answer how the normal colorectal epithelium transforms into pre-cancer,” he said in an interview before the conference. “We also want to better understand this process, identify vulnerabilities, develop chemoprevention, or other cancer interception strategies.”

Vilar-Sanchez’s molecular biology lab includes a basic science lab that addresses basic questions using the power of next-generation sequencing omics. “We use in vitro modeling and in vivo modeling specifically to answer basic questions and understand biology,” he said. “I have a computational lab with a small group of computational scientists that help us to plug big data into lab-based data and clinical data. “Then I have a research group where we run early-phase clinical trials of cancer interception.”

He and his colleagues at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have discovered a new blood-based biomarker that can help identify and characterize asymptomatic people with Lynch syndrome who are more susceptible to developing cancer based on early immune detection signatures. The study was published in Nature Communications in April 2026.

Lynch syndrome is a genetic condition that raises a person’s risk for certain cancers, including colon and endometrial cancer. About 1 million Americans are carriers of Lynch-related gene mutations.

Vilar-Sanchez and his team have also published research in Nature Medicine on a cancer vaccine for those who are carriers of Lynch mutations. Data from this phase 1 trial show that NOUS-209 can induce T cells against neoantigens that are present in tumors and precancer cells. Developed by Nouscom, NOUS-209 is an off-the-shelf, neoantigen-directed cancer vaccine.

In this video, he discusses how the immune system can be harnessed to prevent cancer.