2009 Morton K. Schwartz Award for Significant Contributions in Cancer Research Diagnostics
Dr. Sturgeon is a consultant clinical scientist in the department of clinical biochemistry at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, where she is also director of the National External Quality Assessment Service proficiency-testing center and an honorary senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom. She developed one of the earliest carcinoembryonic antigen immunoassays used routinely in the U.K. and has worked to encourage optimal use of tumor marker tests locally as well as nationally and internationally. As vice chair and project coordinator of a National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry initiative, she worked with a team of more than 100 scientists and clinicians from more than 10 countries to develop laboratory medicine practice guidelines and quality requirements for the use of tumor markers. Dr. Sturgeon is chair of publications and quality control focus groups for the European Group on Tumor Markers. She served on the expert panel of the American Society for Clinical Oncology and the College of American Pathologists that developed guidelines for testing for human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 in tissue. She chairs the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine working group for human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), which has prepared highly purified international reference reagents for six important hCG molecular variants. She has authored more than 80 scientific publications and given more than 80 invited lectures in 24 countries.