Los Angeles — The Prostate Cancer Foundation has named Mary-Ellen Taplin, MD, the recipient of its 2026 Women in Science Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing her decades of research that has helped reshape the understanding and treatment of prostate cancer.
Taplin is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Institute Physician and Chair of the Executive Committee for Clinical Research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She received the award and delivered an award lecture on Oct. 3 during the 33rd Annual PCF Scientific Retreat in Carlsbad, California.
The award honors women who have demonstrated exceptional scientific achievement, leadership and a sustained commitment to advancing prostate cancer research and patient care.
“When prostate cancer stopped responding to hormone therapy, Dr. Taplin asked why and then spent three decades turning the answer into treatments that are now standard of care,” said Gina Carithers, President and CEO of the Prostate Cancer Foundation. “Men with advanced and high-risk disease are living longer because of her work.”
Taplin, a genitourinary oncologist and internationally recognized prostate cancer researcher, has focused much of her career on how prostate cancer responds and adapts to hormone therapy.
In 1995, she was the first to report androgen receptor mutations in metastatic prostate cancer, a finding published in the New England Journal of Medicine that helped establish the androgen receptor as a continuing driver of the disease. The research contributed to the development of newer prostate cancer therapies.
Taplin also played a central role in clinical trials that led to FDA approval of abiraterone and enzalutamide, which are now standard treatments for advanced prostate cancer.
She later led research into intensive androgen-signaling inhibition before surgery for patients with high-risk prostate cancer. That work culminated in the international Phase 3 PROTEUS trial, which was presented at the 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The trial found that adding apalutamide to androgen deprivation therapy before and after radical prostatectomy improved pathological response and metastasis-free survival in patients with high-risk localized or locally advanced prostate cancer.
The Prostate Cancer Foundation has supported Taplin’s research through 16 team science awards since 2008, including Challenge Awards in 2016 and 2023.
“I am honored to receive this award,” Taplin said. “The questions I have worked on for three decades are not questions any one person answers alone. They have been answered alongside patients who enrolled in trials, colleagues and trainees who pushed the science further, and partners like PCF that were willing to fund the difficult, unglamorous work of understanding why treatments stop working.”
Taplin earned her medical degree from the University of Massachusetts Medical School and completed her internal medicine residency and chief residency at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. She later completed a hematology-oncology fellowship at Beth Israel Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
She joined Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 2003 after serving on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts. She has also mentored numerous physician-scientists, including 14 recipients of the PCF Young Investigator Award.
“Dr. Taplin’s career is a case study in what translational research is supposed to look like, where bridging clinical questions and laboratory research ultimately leads to a new treatment,” said Andrea Miyahira, PhD, PCF’s Vice President of Global Research and Innovation.
The PCF Scientific Retreat brings together more than 600 researchers, clinicians and industry leaders focused on prostate cancer biology and treatment. This year’s program also included the PCF Empowering Women in Science Forum on Oct. 2.
