BTC research awards recognize UB’s Talal and Schwartz, Roswell’s Wang; Talal receives national honors

The annual Buffalo Translational Consortium Clinical Research Achievement Awards recognize clinical researchers for their innovative work, their dedication to translational research, and the significance of their findings. The 2024 projects earning recognition made worldwide headlines.

The latest winners’ research:

• Found that opioid treatment program–integrated facilitated telemedicine resulted in significantly higher hepatitis C virus cure rates and participant satisfaction compared with off-site referral, which is the standard of care used throughout the country for treating hepatitis C 
  
• Illustrated that Galectin-3 plays a critical role in eosinophil recruitment and airway allergic inflammation and could be a potential therapeutic target in Type III hereditary angioedema, a rare inherited disorder that predisposes an individual to develop vasogenic edema
• Demonstrated that Ziftomenib, an oral selective menin inhibitor with known preclinical activity in menin-dependent acute myeloid leukaemia models, showed promising clinical activity with manageable toxicity in heavily pretreated patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukaemia

The awards honor outstanding accomplishments in clinical research performed at a Buffalo Translational Consortium (BTC) institution, with investigators from the University at Buffalo or Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center serving as principal authors. Research findings must have been published or in press in the past 12 months.

The 2024 Clinical Research Achievement Awards Top Award winner is Andrew H. Talal, MD, MPH, Professor, Department of Medicine, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. He was selected for the study “Integrated Hepatitis C-Opioid Use Disorder Care Through Facilitated Telemedicine: A Randomized Trial,” published in the April 23, 2024, issue of JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Recognized as a 2024 Clinical Research Achievement Award Finalist is Stanley A. Schwartz, MD, PhD, UB Distinguished Professor, Medicine and Pediatrics, Division Chief, Allergy, Immunology & Rheumatology, Department of Medicine, Jacobs School. He was selected for the study “Omics Analysis Reveals Galectin-3 to Be a Potential Key Regulator of Allergic Inflammation in Hereditary Angioedema,” published in the February 2025 issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: Global.

Also recognized as a 2024 Clinical Research Achievement Award Finalist is Eunice S. Wang, MD, Professor of Oncology, Leukemia Clinical Disease Team Leader, Chief, Department of Medicine — Leukemia Assistant Member, Tumor Immunology Program, Department of Immunology, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. She was selected for the study “Ziftomenib in Relapsed or Refractory Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (KOMET-001): A Multicentre, Open-label, Multi-cohort, Phase 1 Trial,” published in the October 11, 2024, issue of The Lancet Oncology.

The award recipients were recognized during the 2025 Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) Annual Forum, held on March 19 at the Clinical and Translational Research Center.

“Those are three outstanding studies that are either already helping patients or will soon be helping patients,” said CTSI Director Timothy F. Murphy, MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor, during the forum.

The BTC recognition was just one recent honor received by Talal. During the introduction of the winners’ presentations at the Annual Forum, BTC Clinical Research Achievement Awards Committee Chair Anne B. Curtis, MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor, Department of Medicine, Jacobs School, noted that the 2024 BTC recipient’s study has earned major recognition for the university.  

As shared in UBNow, Talal has been honored with a 2025 Top Ten Clinical Research Achievement Award from the Clinical Research Forum. The awards honor groundbreaking achievements in clinical research from across the nation. The Clinical Research Forum includes the leading academic health centers and medical schools in the country.

“This is the first time that we have had one of our UB researchers awarded among the top 10 nationally,” Curtis explained during the Annual Forum. “It is a fantastic achievement, and we are very proud of him.”

Talal received the award at a ceremony on April 14 in Washington, D.C., during the Translational Science 2025 conference. At the ceremony, it was announced that Talal was also the recipient of one of three Distinguished Clinical Research Achievement Awards.

“The high impact study from Dr. Talal was recognized nationally because it has had a direct impact in improving health outcomes,” says Murphy. “My congratulations to Dr. Talal and his research team for their rigorous methods in demonstrating improved health outcomes that can be implemented widely to the benefit of patients nationally.”

For a complete list of past BTC Clinical Research Achievement Awards honorees, see the CTSI website.