OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center Researcher Awarded Prestigious Conquer Cancer Career Development Award

OKLAHOMA CITY — The University of Oklahoma is pleased to announce that Abdul Rafeh Naqash, MD has been awarded a 2025 Conquer Cancer Career Development Award (CDA) by the ASCO Foundation. The award will be presented during the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, held May 30–June 3 in Chicago, Illinois.

The CDA is a highly competitive, three-year grant that supports early-career clinical investigators in establishing independent research programs. This year, only 19 recipients were selected globally, underscoring the significance of Naqash’s recognition.

“Receiving the ASCO Conquer Cancer Career Development Award is deeply personal,” said Naqash. “It’s a recognition not only of my work in understanding the biology and biomarkers in rare cancers like alveolar soft part sarcoma, but of the belief that even the rarest of cancers deserve cutting-edge answers. This award—and the critical funding behind it—gives physician-scientists like me the platform to pursue bold, high-risk ideas that traditional funding often overlooks. Finding biomarkers and targets within the tumors has always been a passion, and this CDA further helps advance those ambitions with the help of collaboration within and outside of OU. I’m incredibly grateful to Conquer Cancer and proud to carry this mission forward here at the University of Oklahoma and the OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center.”

Naqash is a physician-scientist with a clinical and research focus on lung cancers, rare cancers, immunotherapy biomarkers, immune-related toxicities, and early phase drug development. As part of the TSET Phase I Program at Stephenson Cancer Center, he integrates genomically driven strategies into early-phase clinical trials.

A graduate of Government Medical College Srinagar in Kashmir, Naqash completed his internal medicine residency at the University of Buffalo and specialized training in hematology/oncology at East Carolina University. He also completed a fellowship in early-phase clinical trials at the National Cancer Institute.

His research has been published in leading journals such as the New England Journal Of Medicine, Lancet Oncology, Nature Reviews, Journal of Clinical Oncology, JAMA Oncology, among others. Naqash has earned several distinguished honors, including ASCO Merit Awards, the ASCO-SITC Award, the ASCO Young Investigator Award, the National Cancer Institute Director’s Award, and the NIH Director's Award of Merit, among others. He is actively engaged in leadership roles across national oncology organizations and contributes to outreach and education initiatives with ASCO, The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), and the Society of Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) through editorial and social media roles with ASCO journals.

For more information about the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting and Conquer Cancer® Foundation, visit www.conquer.org.