Stanford University Professor Patrick O. Brown has been awarded the American Cancer Society's Medal of Honor, the organization's highest honor, for his contributions to cancer research.

The award, which was given Friday in New York, is for Brown's development of low-cost, accessible automated microarrays and his life-saving contributions to the field of functional genomics.

Brown's most important contribution was developing the basic methods for studying global gene expression patterns. His development of a DNA chip has allowed scientists easy and inexpensive access to assessing changes in gene expression, which in turn has produced insights into critical genetic information for diseases such as leukemia, lymphoma, prostate cancer, and early stage breast cancer.

Brown's initial forays into research that led to this award began 15 years ago.

"It's important that I make it perfectly clear that people know one person receives the award but it represents the work of a great group of students, post docs and colleagues," Brown said in an interview Friday.

"I feel weird about the whole thing," he said, but added about the award, "I am very happy to get it. All my science heroes have received this in the past, so that makes it very special to me."

Brown works as an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute of Biochemistry and as a professor at Stanford University.

— Bay City News Service