The School of Medicine honored Scot Ebbinghaus, M.D., ’89, a medical oncologist and health care pioneer, with the 2022 E. Grey Dimond, M.D., Take Wing Award during a ceremony and lecture on May 13.
Ebbinghaus has a distinguished research career in immuno-oncology therapeutics. He currently serves as vice president and therapeutic area head of late-stage oncology clinical research for Merck Research Laboratories in North Wales, Pennsylvania.
He is directly responsible for the strategy and execution of multiple clinical trials that led to the development of pembrolizumab, a drug described as a game changer and one of the most important tools in the treatment of certain types of cancer.
Following his graduation from the School of Medicine, Ebbinghaus completed his internal medicine residency and a fellowship in hematology/oncology at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. He served as an associate professor of medicine at the University of Arizona before joining Merc.
In his Take Wing lecture, Ebbinghaus discussed the development of pembrolizumab, a therapeutic that has received 44 FDA approvals for use in multiple solid tumor types. His work laid the groundwork for the drug’s approvals and its production to scale with millions of doses having been delivered to patients throughout the world.
His research and work with the cancer treatment has been the topic of multiple New England Journal of Medicine publications and American Society of Clinical Oncology plenary sessions
