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11th Moores Cancer Center Industry/Academia Translational Oncology Symposium
Agenda and Speaker Biographies
Program Agenda
8:30AM
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Registration and Continental Breakfast
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9:00AM
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Symposium Organizer Welcome
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- Ida Deichaite, PhD, Moores Cancer Center
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9:05AM
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Director Welcome
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- Scott Lippman, MD, Moores Cancer Center
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9:10AM
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School of Medicine Welcome
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- David Brenner, MD, UC San Diego School of Medicine
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9:15AM
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Chancellor Welcome
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- Pradeep Khosla, PhD, UC San Diego
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9:20AM
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San Diego Welcome
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- Scott Peters, Congressman
Congressman Scott Peters serves California’s 52nd Congressional District, which includes the cities of Coronado, Poway and most of northern San Diego. First elected in 2012, he currently serves on the House committees on Armed Services & on Science, Space, & Technology Committee.
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9:25AM
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- Finding the Money to Fund Translational Research
Bob Klein, Klein Financial Corporation
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9:45AM
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Duane Roth Award
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- Presented by Rep. Scott Peters
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9:50AM
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Keynote Presentation:
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- Imatinib as a Paradigm of Molecularly Targeted Cancer Therapies
Brian Druker, MD, OHSU Knight Cancer Institute
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10:20AM
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Break
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10:35AM
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- Engineering the immune system with chimeric antigen receptors to eradicate cancer
Margo Roberts, PhD, Kite Pharma
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10:50AM
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- Drugging the Undrugable: KRAS
D. Lynn Kirkpatrick, PhD, PHusis Pharmaceuticals
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11:05AM
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- ePatients on the Front Lines: Precision Medicine, the FDA, and Me
Janet Freeman-Daily, MS, ENG, Patient Advocacy
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11:15AM
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Keynote Presentation:
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- Cancer Genomics: Turning Discovery into Translation
Elaine Mardis, PhD, The Genome Institute, Washington University School of Medicine
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11:45AM
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- Advancing the Utility of Clinic Sequencing for MDS
Rafael Bejar, MD, PhD, Moores Cancer Center
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12:00PM
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Lunch & Poster Session
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1:15PM
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- The Cancer Cell Map Initiative (CCMI) - Mapping the hallmark networks of cancer
Trey Ideker, PhD, UC San Diego
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1:30PM
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- A More Beautiful Question
Brad Perkins, MD, Human Longevity, Inc.
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1:45PM
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- A novel bispecific antibody targeting EGFR and cMet with multiple mechanisms of action
Mark Anderson, PhD, Janssen Pharmaceuticals
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2:00PM
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- Napoleon in Rags and the Language that he Used: the New World of Immunotherapy in Head and Neck Cancer
Ezra Cohen, MD, Moores Cancer Center
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2:15PM
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- Melanoma Patients Path: Translations to the Clinic
Gregory Daniels, MD, Moores Cancer Center
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2:30PM
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- Targeting tumor-associated inflammation in cancer
Lisa M. Coussens, PhD, OHSU Knight Cancer Institute
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2:45PM
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- Targeting PI3Kgamma and BTK to suppress tumor-associated inflammation
Judith Varner, PhD, Moores Cancer Center
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3:00PM
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Break
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3:20PM
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- Combining VEGF inhibitors with strategies to manipulate the immune system in cancer
Napoleone Ferrara, MD, Moores Cancer Center
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3:35PM
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- Development of Next Generation Angiogenesis Inhibitors
Charles Theuer, MD, PhD, TRACON Pharmaceuticals
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3:50PM
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- Bringing Btk inhibition forward
Danelle James, MD, MAS, Pharmacyclics
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4:05PM
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- CIRM 2.0. Building a better stem cell agency
C. Randal Mills, PhD, California Institute for Regenerative Medicine
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4:20PM
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- Reversing Drug Resistance in Cancer Stemness
David Cheresh, PhD, Moores Cancer Center
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4:35PM
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- Preclinical and Clinical Cancer Stem Cell Detection and Elimination
Catriona Jamieson, MD, PhD, Moores Cancer Center
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5:00PM
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Symposium Reception
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Speaker Biographies
Please click the [+] to view Speaker Biographies.
Keynote Speaker:
Elaine R. Mardis, PhD
Robert E. and Louise F. Dunn Distinguished Professor of Medicine
Co-Director, The Genome Institute of Washington University School of Medicine
[+] Biography
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Dr. Elaine Mardis graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Oklahoma with a B.S. degree in zoology. She then completed her Ph.D. in Chemistry and Biochemistry in 1989, also at Oklahoma. Following graduation, Dr. Mardis was a senior research scientist for four years at BioRad Laboratories in Hercules, CA.
In 1993, Dr. Mardis joined The Genome Institute at Washington University School of Medicine. As Director of Technology Development, she helped create methods and automation pipelines for sequencing the Human Genome. She now serves as Co-director of The Genome Institute.
Dr. Mardis has research interests in the application of next-generation sequencing to characterize cancer genomes and transcriptomes, and using these data to support therapeutic decision-making. She also is interested in facilitating the translation of basic science discoveries about human disease into the clinical setting. br>
Dr. Mardis serves as an editorial board member of Molecular Cancer Research, Disease Models and Mechanisms and Annals of Oncology, and acts as a reviewer for Nature, the New England Journal of Medicine, Cell and Genome Research. In 2014, she was named as the Robert E. and Louise F. Dunn Distinguished Professor of Medicine. She serves on the scientific advisory boards of Qiagen Ingenuity, DNA Nexus, and ZS Genetics, and is a member of the Supervisory Board of Qiagen N.V. Dr. Mardis received the Scripps Translational Research award for her work on cancer genomics in 2010, and was named a Distinguished Alumni of the University of Oklahoma College of Arts and Sciences for 2011. Discover Magazine featured her work in cancer genomics as one of their top 100 science stories in 2013.
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Keynote Speaker:
Brian J. Druker, MD
JELD-WEN Chair of Leukemia Research, Oregon Health & Science University
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
[+] Biography
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Dr. Druker is Director of the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute, Associate Dean for Oncology of the OHSU School of Medicine, JELD-WEN Chair of Leukemia Research at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Upon graduating from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine in 1981, Dr. Druker completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at Barnes Hospital, Washington School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. He trained in oncology at Harvard's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and then returned to the lab to begin his research career studying the regulation of the growth of cancer cells and the practical application to cancer therapies.
Dr. Druker’s work in the lab, which he continued after joining OHSU in 1993, helped pioneer the practice of precision, or personalized, cancer medicine which targets the molecular underpinnings of an individual’s cancer while leaving healthy cells unharmed. He developed 4G10, an anti-phosphotyrosine antibody that was an essential reagent to scientists at Novartis in their kinase inhibitor drug discovery program. In collaboration with Novartis, his laboratory performed pre-clinical studies that were instrumental to the development of Gleevec, a drug that targets the molecular defect in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). After completing a series of preclinical studies, Dr. Druker spearheaded the highly successful clinical trials of imatinib for CML, which led to FDA approval of the drug in record time.
Dr. Druker’s work not only served as a proof of principle for targeted therapies, but it demonstrated the possibility of transforming cancer into a manageable disease, a concept previously unimagined. Imatinib established a new treatment paradigm for cancer as hundreds of targeted therapies have been developed in its wake. Over time, imatinib has also proven effective in treating multiple forms of cancer. It is currently FDA approved for CML, gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) and eight other cancers.
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Dr. Druker’s role in the development of imatinib and its application in the clinic has resulted in numerous awards for Dr. Druker, including the AACR-Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award, the Warren Alpert Prize from Harvard Medical School, the American Society of Hematology’s Dameshek Prize, the Lance Armstrong Foundation’s Pioneer of Survivorship Carpe Diem Award, the American Cancer Society’s Medal of Honor, the Kettering Prize from General Motors Cancer Research Foundation, the David A. Karnofsky Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the Robert-Koch Award, the 2009 Lasker-DeBakey Award for Clinical Medical Research, the Stanley J. Korsmeyer award from the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the American Society of Hematology’s Ernest Beutler Prize, the Japan Prize in Healthcare and Medical Technology and the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies in 2003, the American Association of Physicians in 2006, the National Academy of Sciences in 2007, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.
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Mark Anderson, PhD
Scientific Director, Janssen Research & Development
[+] Biography
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Dr. Mark Anderson is a Scientific Director of Oncology Research at Janssen Pharmaceuticals, the pharmaceutical division of Johnson&Johnson. He leads a discovery team focused on the preclinical development of biologically based therapeutics for cancer. He received his Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and conducted his postdoctoral training at Merck Research Laboratories in West Point, Pennsylvania. Prior to joining J&J in 2001, Dr. Anderson spent several years in the biotechnology industry discovering and developing innate immune stimulants and anti-cancer agents at Magainin Pharmaceuticals. He has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and patents in the areas of transcription control, innate immunity, cancer biology, and biologic cancer therapeutics. Dr. Anderson’s teams have progressed several novel agents from the discovery stage to clinical testing. His laboratory has focused on the development of antibodies, antibody drug conjugates, novel biologic scaffolds, and recently bispecific antibodies for the treatment of cancer.
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Rafael Bejar, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor, Division of Hematology Oncology
UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center
[+] Biography
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Dr. Rafael Bejar is a physician-scientist at the UCSD Moores Cancer in La Jolla, California where his laboratory studies the molecular basis of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and related neoplasms. He obtained his medical and PhD degrees in the Medical Scientist Training Program at UCSD prior to his medical internship at the University of Chicago. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston where he later served as a Chief Medical Resident. He then served as fellow in Hematology and Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute where he later became an Instructor. There he worked in laboratory of Dr. Benjamin Ebert on the genetic basis of MDS.
In collaboration with several groups, Dr. Bejar’s work has helped identify how genetic mutations contribute to the development of MDS and how testing for these abnormalities can help physicians care for their patients with this disease (New England Journal of Medicine, 2011). Most recently, he has published on mutations that predict response to treatment with hypomethylating agents (Blood, 2014) and outcomes after stem cell transplantation (Journal of Clinical Oncology, 2014). His laboratory is now focused on the role of somatic mutations in splicing factors and epigenetic regulators in MDS.
Dr. Bejar serves on the molecular prognosis committee of the International Working Group for MDS and is a member of the NCCN clinic guidelines committee for MDS. At UCSD, Dr. Bejar has established an MDS Center of Excellence where he cares for patients, oversees clinical trials, and continues to study the molecular mechanisms that drive the development of MDS.
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David Brenner, MD
Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences
Dean, UC San Diego School of Medicine
[+] Biography
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David Brenner is vice chancellor for Health Sciences and dean of the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. In this role, he leads the School of Medicine, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at University of California, San Diego, and UC San Diego Health System. Dr. Brenner has oversight of more than 1300 faculty physicians, pharmacists and scientists; 7,500 staff; more than 750 medical and pharmacy students, and a health system that cares for approximately 125,000 patients annually.
A distinguished physician-scientist and leader in the field of gastroenterological research, Dr. Brenner first joined UC San Diego in 1985 as a gastroenterology fellow, later joining the School of Medicine faculty, and serving as a physician at the Veterans Affairs (VA) San Diego Healthcare System. He also served as a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences and a Clinical Investigator in the VA system. In 1993, Dr. Brenner became professor and chief of the Division of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he continued to earn accolades for his patient care and research. He was ultimately recruited to UC San Diego from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, where from 2003 to 2007 he was Samuel Bard Professor, chair of the Department of Medicine, and physician-in-chief of New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia.
Dr. Brenner’s professional memberships include the American Society for Clinical Investigation; the Association of American Physicians, for which he was the president, the American College of Physicians, the American Gastroenterological Association, the American Clinical and Climatological Association, and the Institute of Medicine. He is also on the board of directors of two philanthropic foundations, the AlphaOne Foundation and the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation. Dr. Brenner has published over 400 articles and has served on several editorial boards, including being the editor-in-chief of Gastroenterology.
He earned his medical degree from the Yale University School of Medicine. After completing his residency at Yale-New Haven Medical Center, he served as a research associate in the Genetics and Biochemistry Branch of the National Institute of Arthritis, Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
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David Cheresh, PhD
Distinguished Professor & Vice Chair of Pathology
UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center
[+] Biography
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David Cheresh studies the mechanism of action of signaling networks that regulate tumor growth stemness, drug resistance and metastasis. He discovered that ανβ3 integrin is a functional marker of angiogenic blood vessels and drives cancer stemness. His work is basic and translational focusing on new strategies for biologically-based drug development. In particular, he studies how integrings and growth factor receptors promote cell survival, angiogenesis and tumor invasion. His work has lead to the development of several drugs now in various stages of clinical development. Cheresh’s research in this area has been widely cited with seven of this peer-reviewed publications being cited >1000 times. David Cheresh was the scientific founder of TargeGen, a San Diego based Biotechnology Company which developed a number of small molecules based in part on discoveries made in the Cheresh laboratory. TargeGen’s JAK2 inhibitor has shown clinical activity in patents with myeloproliferative disease and has successfully completed phase III trials. Most recently, Cheresh and his colleagues have developed a novel scaffold based chemistry approach to stabilize kinases in their inactive state. These studies have lead to the discovery of a first in class Raf inhibitor that has distinct advantages relative to ATP mimetics of RAF. Cheresh and his colleagues at UCSD have founded a new startup company (Amitech Therapeutic Solutions, ATS) which focuses on the discovery of allosteric inhibitors of kinases such as those targeting Raf and other important molecules/pathways relevant to cancer and inflammatory disease.
Cheresh and colleagues are now focused on tumor cells that display stem like properties, and are highly aggressive often showing drug resistance. It was found that integrin avb3 serves as a marker of breast, lung and pancreatic tumors with stem-like properties that are highly resistant to receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors such as erlotinib. This was observed in vitro and in mice bearing patient-derived tumor xenographs or in clinical specimens from lung cancer patients that had progressed on erlotinib. Mechanistically, ανβ3, in the unligated state, recruits KRAS and RalB to the tumor cell plasma membrane, leading to the activation of TBK-1/NFkB. In fact, ανβ3 and the resulting KRAS/RalB/NFkB pathway are both necessary and sufficient to promote tumor initiation, anchorage-independence, self-renewal, and erlotinib resistance. Pharmacological targeting this pathway reverses both tumor stemness and drug resistance. These findings not only identify ανβ3 as a marker/driver of tumor stemness but they reveal a therapeutic strategy to sensitize such tumors to RTK inhibition.
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Ezra Cohen, MD
Professor of Medicine & Associate Director for Translational Science
UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center
[+] Biography
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Ezra Cohen, MD, an internationally renowned translational researcher, has been acknowledged for his contribution to the National Cancer Institute Task Force on PI3 Kinase/AKT/mTOR Targeting. A physician-scientist, Dr. Cohen led an independently funded laboratory interested in mechanisms of action of novel therapeutics. He has made major contributions to targeted therapy. His recent National Institutes of Health-funded work in the study of epidermal growth factor receptor inhibitors in head and neck cancer has contributed to the understanding of the biology of this critical signaling network, integration of these agents into standard of care, and definition of mechanisms to overcome resistance. He was recently appointed as chair of the NCI Head and Neck Cancer Steering Committee that oversees NCI-funded clinical research (including all NCI Cooperative Group trials) in this disease.
Dr. Cohen is Associate Director for Translational Science and team leader in Head and Neck Oncology as well as the Solid Tumor Therapeutics research program. He brings his expertise and preeminent reputation in head and neck cancer research and patient care to solid tumor therapeutics. Among other roles, he chairs the Protocol Review and Monitoring Committee (PRMC) and serves as a member of the Cancer Council, C3 steering committee, and the cancer center’s Executive Committee.
Dr. Cohen is editor-in-chief of Oral Oncology, the highest impact specialty journal in head and neck cancer, and has chaired the most recent two Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer Symposia—the largest international meeting of its kind—sponsored by the American Society for Radiation Oncology, the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Head and Neck Society. He has been the principal investigator on multiple studies of novel agents in head and neck cancer and other solid tumors in all phases of development including chemoprevention, phase I, II, and III trials. Dr. Cohen has authored more than 120 papers and has presented his research at national and international meetings. In addition, he is Chair of the Career Development Subcommittee of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and has served as a grant reviewer for the NIH, American Association for Cancer Research, American Society of Clinical Oncology, and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.
Dr. Cohen completed residencies in Family Medicine at the University of Toronto and in Internal Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He completed a Hematology/Oncology fellowship at the University of Chicago where he was named chief fellow. Prior to his arrival in San Diego, Dr. Cohen was Co-Director of the Head and Neck Cancer Program, Associate Director for Education and Program Director for the Hematology/Oncology Fellowship at the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center. A dedicated educator, Dr. Cohen also mentored and developed young faculty in his program.
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Lisa M. Coussens, PhD
Hildegard Lamfrom Chair in Basic Science
Professor and Chair, Cell, Developmental & Cancer Biology
Associate Director for Basic Research, OHSU Knight Cancer Institute
[+] Biography
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Dr. Coussens is the Chair of the Department of Cell, Developmental & Cancer Biology, and Associate Director for Basic Research in the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Sciences University (OHSU) and holds the Hildegard Lamfrom Chair in Basic Science. She received her Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from UCLA in 1993, and completed her postdoctoral fellowship in Cancer Biology at UCSF in Douglas Hanahans' laboratory. Dr. Coussens research focus is on elucidating the roles of immune cells and their mediators as critical regulators of solid tumor development. Her lab reported that lymphocytes selectively regulate myeloid cell (macrophage) function in mouse models of squamous and mammary carcinogenesis, and mesothelioma, and that selective inhibition of key factors regulating either macrophage recruitment or function significantly enhance efficacy of chemo- and radiation therapy, and thereby extend long term survival of tumor-bearing mice. These discoveries are currently being translated into the clinical realm; Dr. Coussens is Lead PI on a KOMEN Promise grant conducting an investigator-initiated multi-center Phase Ib/II clinical trial evaluating a novel macrophage-antagonist in combination with chemotherapy in women with metastatic triple negative breast cancer. More recently, Dr. Coussens was awarded a Stand-Up-To-Cancer grant focussed on clinical evaluation of immune-based therapies in pancreas cancer. Her contributions to this international team are based on her laboratories identification of B cells and humoral immune-mediated factors regulating T cells and immune suppression in squamous and pancreas cancer. Specifically, her studies are supporting evaluation of a Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor plus chemotherapy in Phase Ib/II clinical trials of pancreatic cancer and Head and Neck cancer patients. Dr. Coussens has received the prestigious Gertrude B. Elion Award from the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR), the Mallinckrodt Award for Medical Science, a V Foundation Scholar Award, and two sequential Era of Hope Scholar Awards from the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program. In 2012, she was the recipient of the AACR-Women in Cancer Research Charlotte Friend Memorial Lectureship, and is the 2015 recipient of the 13th Rosalind E. Franklin Award from the National Cancer Institute.
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Gregory Daniels, MD
Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Division of Hematology Oncology
UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center
[+] Biography
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The incidence of melanoma has steadily increased over the last decade, affecting more than 1 in 35 individuals in their lifetime. Most of these lesions are cured by excision. Unfortunately, those patients with disease that has spread to lymph nodes or distant sites have very few effective therapeutic options.
Dr. Daniels focuses on offering effective standard therapies and experimental protocols of promising new options for patients with malignant melanomas. High-dose interleukin 2 is the only FDA-approved treatment for melanoma, showing an appreciable long-term survival advantage for select patients with metastatic disease. Dr. Daniels offers therapy with high-dose interleukin 2, and leads the Cancer Center’s efforts in offering clinical protocols that target pathways controlling cell growth, as well as immune-based treatments. His research interest has focused upon understanding the link between autoimmunity and tumor immunity. His laboratory work has shown that one can break immunologic tolerance to normal tissue, leading to protective immunity that is effective against tumors.
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Currently, his research centers upon creating a therapeutic cancer vaccine in melanoma and GU tumors through in situ manipulation of existing tumors. Utilizing intratumoral injection of small molecules developed at the Moores UCSD Cancer Center, combined with local hyperthermia and cell death, Daniels hopes to create a vaccine system that is of low toxicity and relatively simple to apply in a variety of clinical settings.
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Napoleone Ferrara, MD
Distinguished Professor of Pathology & Senior Deputy Director for Basic Science
UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center
[+] Biography
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Napoleone Ferrara, MD, joined UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center after a storied career in Northern California at the biotechnology giant Genentech, where he pioneered development of new treatments for cancer and age-related macular degeneration. There, he discovered vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)—and made the first VEGF antibody—which suppresses growth of a variety of tumors. These findings helped lead to development of the first clinically available anti-angiogenesis inhibitor drug, bevacizumab (Avastin), which prevents the growth of new blood vessels into a solid tumor and which has become part of standard treatment for a variety of cancers. Dr. Ferrara’s work led also to the development of ranibizumab (Lucentis), a drug that is highly effective at preventing vision loss in intraocular neovascular disorders.
At Moores Cancer Center, Dr. Ferrara serves as Senior Deputy Director for Basic Science and is a Distinguished Professor of Pathology in the UC San Diego School of Medicine, where he will continue cancer drug research targeting angiogenesis. He is presently focusing on investigating mechanisms of tumor angiogenesis alternative to VEGF, in particular the role of factors produced by myeloid cells and fibroblasts in mediating resistance to VEGF inhibitors.
Dr. Ferrara earned his MD degree from the University of Catania Medical School in Italy. He did his postdoctoral research at UC San Francisco. Dr. Ferrara was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2006.
In February 2013, Dr. Ferrara was named one of 11 recipients of the inaugural Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, which comes with a $3 million cash award. He has also won numerous other awards, including the General Motors Cancer Research Award (2006), the ASCO Science of Oncology Award (2007), the Pezcoller Foundation/AACR International Award (2009), the Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award (2010), the Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research (2011), and The Economist’s Innovation Award for bioscience in 2012.
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Janet Freeman-Daily
Writer, Speaker, Science Geek, Lung Cancer Patient
[+] Biography
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Janet Freeman-Daily, MS, ENG, is a metastatic lung cancer patient who was diagnosed with stage 3A NSCLC in May 2011. After two chemotherapy regimes, two radiation protocols, and two recurrences, she used information obtained in online forums to get her tumor tissue tested for newer molecular markers and find a clinical trial. She has had No Evidence of Disease since January 2013 thanks to crizotinib therapy for ROS1 NSCLC. After applying her MIT and Caltech engineering degrees to a career in aerospace systems engineering for two decades, she now is an active advocate for lung cancer patients, employing her writing and speaking skills and science background to translate the experience and science of lung cancer treatment and research into language other patients can understand. Her advocacy accomplishments include an award-winning lung cancer blog at grayconnections.net, contributing blogger for CURE Today magazine, co-moderator for Lung Cancer Social Media (#LCSM) Chat on Twitter, Member of the Addario Patient Advisory Board for the Addario Lung Cancer Foundation, Consumer Reviewer for the DoD’s Lung Cancer Research Program (LCRP), Patient Advocate on the Lung Cancer SPORE at University of Colorado Hospital, and ePatient Scholar Presenter at the 2014 Stanford Medicine X Conference.
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Trey Ideker, PhD
Division Chief of Medical Genetics
Professor, Departments of Medicine and Bioengineering, UC San Diego
[+] Biography
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Trey Ideker, Ph.D. is Professor of Genetics in the Department of Medicine at the University of California at San Diego. He serves as Director of the National Resource for Network Biology and Director of the San Diego Center for Systems Biology, as well as being Adjunct Professor of Computer Science and Bioengineering and Member of the Moores UCSD Cancer Center. Ideker received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in Molecular Biology under the supervision of Dr. Leroy Hood. Dr. Ideker’s research is led by the vision that given the right experimentation and analysis, it will be possible to automatically assemble maps of pathways just as we now assemble maps of genomes. During graduate work, he developed a general iterative framework for how biological systems can be systematically perturbed, interrogated and modeled. This framework laid the foundation for many studies in the discipline of Systems Biology. He demonstrated that biological networks could be integrated with gene expression to systematically map pathways and aligned, like sequences, to reveal conserved and divergent functions. He showed that the best biomarkers of disease are typically not single proteins but aggregates of proteins in networks. Dr. Ideker has founded influential bioinformatic tools including Cytoscape, a popular network analysis platform which has been cited >12,000 times. Ideker serves on the Editorial Boards for Cell, Cell Reports, Nature Scientific Data, EMBO Molecular Systems Biology, and PLoS Computational Biology and is a Fellow of AAAS and AIMBE. He was named one of the Top 10 Innovators of 2006 by Technology Review magazine and was the recipient of the 2009 Overton Prize from the International Society for Computational Biology. His work has been featured in news outlets such as The Scientist, the San Diego Union Tribune, Forbes magazine and the New York Times.
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Danelle James, MD, MAS
Head of Oncology, Pharmacyclics
[+] Biography
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Danelle James is Head of Oncology at Pharmacyclics where she leads clinical development efforts for CLL/SLL, Graft vs Host Disease, and Solid tumors. Prior to joining Pharmacyclics in 2011, Dr. James was a faculty member in the Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology and Oncology at University of California San Diego. Her research focus there for ten years, was the study of the Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) and the tumor microenvironment and the clinical-translational development of agents that can be used to target these interactions. Danelle worked closely under the mentorship of Thomas Kipps and as a member CLL Research Consortium (CRC), she co-coordinated the clinical trials program evaluating the combination of novel agents for the treatment of CLL. Danelle started her career in industry more than 18 years ago at Biogen in Cambridge Massachusetts where she worked in the Department of Immunology and Inflammation.
Dr. James completed Internal Medicine residency and Hematology/Oncology fellowship at UCSD, is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and in Hematology. She obtained formal education in clinical research methodologies and a Masters degree in Advanced Studies of Clinical Research from UCSD.
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Catriona Jamieson, MD, PhD
Associate Professor, Division of Hematology-Oncology
Deputy Director, Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center
Chief, Division of Regenerative Medicine, UC San Diego
Director, Stem Cell Research at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center
Co-Director of the UC San Diego Stem Cell Training Program
[+] Biography
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Catriona Jamieson, MD, PhD is the inaugural chief of the new Division of Regenerative Medicine, in the Department of Medicine at UC San Diego. Dr. Jamieson joined the UC San Diego faculty in 2005 and is an associate professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology-Oncology. She has proven her leadership skills, expertise and effectiveness in her current positions as director of the Stem Cell Research Program at Moores Cancer Center, co-leader of the Hematologic Malignancies Program, hematology team leader, co-director of the UC San Diego Stem Cell Training Grant, coordinating course director of the Interdisciplinary Stem Cell course, and a co-director of the new Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center.
Dr. Jamieson specializes in myeloproliferative disorders (MPDs) and leukemia. Myeloproliferative neoplasms are a family of uncommon but not rare degenerative disorders in which the body overproduces blood cells. Myeloproliferative neoplasms can cause many forms of blood clotting including heart attack, stroke, deep venous thrombosis, and pulmonary emboli and can develop into acute myelogenous leukemia. Although some effective treatments are available, they are laden with serious side effects. In addition, individuals can become resistant to the treatments. Dr. Jamieson studies the mutant stem cells and progenitor cells in myeloproliferative neoplasms. These cells can give rise to cancer stem cells. Cancer stem cells may lie low to evade chemotherapy and then activate again later, causing disease progression and resistance to treatment. Her goal is to find more selective, less toxic therapies.
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Pradeep Khosla, PhD
Chancellor, UC San Diego
[+] Biography
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Pradeep K. Khosla, a distinguished academic leader and electrical and computer engineer, began his tenure as UC San Diego’s eighth chancellor on August 1, 2012. Chancellor Khosla previously served as dean of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. There, he set the strategic direction for undergraduate and graduate education and research, and was elected University Professor, the highest distinction a faculty member could achieve. At UC San Diego, he has initiated a comprehensive, all-inclusive strategic planning process to develop a vision and shared goals for the future of the campus.
Chancellor Khosla is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Engineering, an Honorary Fellow of the Indian Academy of Science, and a Fellow of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence. He is also the recipient of numerous awards for his leadership, teaching, and research, including the 2012 Light of India Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the George Westinghouse Award for contributions to improve engineering teaching. In 2012, he was named as one of the 50 most influential Indian-Americans by SiliconIndia. He received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, and his master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon.
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D. Lynn Kirkpatrick, PhD
President and CEO, PHusis Therapeutics Inc.
[+] Biography
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Dr. Kirkpatrick, a medicinal chemist and pharmacologist, sent 16 years in academia before starting and successfully selling her first company, ProlX Pharmaceuticals Corp. Dr. Kirkpatrick has focused her career on cancer drug discovery and development, taking three small molecules from bench to bedside into Phase 2 clinical trials. When ProlX was acquired by Biomira Inc., she became the Chief Scientific Officer the merged company, now known as Oncothyreon, Inc. She is now President and CEO of PHusis Therapeutics Inc. in La Jolla, CA. PHusis has a computational platform to develop targeted small molecules for cancer therapy, with one agent poise for Phase 1 clinical evaluation. Dr. Kirkpatrick received her PhD from the University of Saskatchewan and did post-doctoral research at Yale University School of Medicine. She has published extensively in the area of targeted cancer drug discovery and development and holds numerous patents for novel cancer drugs and technologies.
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Robert Klein
President, Founder, and CEO, Klein Financial Corporation
[+] Biography
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Robert N. Klein is President of Klein Financial Corporation, a company that designs and implements innovative solutions for affordable housing mortgage financing. Klein Financial Corporation acts as a development managing partner or as a development and finance consultant, assisting its clients with new construction, acquisition and rehabilitation of affordable multifamily and mixed-use developments. More than $5 billion in financing has been arranged by Klein Financial for its projects or those of its clients. Throughout its history, Klein Financial also has served as a financial advisor to state and regional public entities.
Additionally, Bob is President of Klein Financial Resources, Inc. (and the Klein Group) which undertakes prototype real estate development projects. Klein Financial Resources and Klein Financial Corporation have been the primary developer and/or redeveloper of 388,000 square feet of retail and office space as well as over 4,500 housing units. Klein Financial Resources, Inc. has been the development consultant for 2,000,000 square feet of commercial rental space; 7,000 housing units, and 10,000 acres, in the aggregate, of land development. In a co-investment, asset management role, Klein Financial Corporation also maintains a current portfolio of approximately 3,000 units; part of this portfolio involves value enhancement programs that are in progress.
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Scott Lippman, MD
Professor of Medicine, Senior Associate Dean and
Associate Vice Chancellor for Cancer Research and Care
Chugai Pharmaceutical Chair in Cancer, Director, UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center
[+] Biography
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Scott M. Lippman, MD, joined Moores Cancer Center in May 2012. He is a professor of medicine at UC San Diego and holds the Chugai Pharmaceutical Chair in Cancer. Previously, he was chair of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology at The University of Texas (UT) MD Anderson Cancer Center. Lippman brings more than 25 years of experience as principal investigator of translational research involving investigator-initiated clinical trials. He has participated in the national leadership of clinical/translational research planning and development within the NCI Cooperative Group setting and currently sits on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Trials/Translational Research Advisory Committee. He has served on several cancer center external advisory boards and major-trial steering committees, and has played a leadership role in major AACR and American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) committees and programs.
Lippman graduated from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, did his internship and residency training at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, and had hematology/medical oncology training at Stanford University and the University of Arizona. He is triple board-certified in internal medicine, hematology and medical oncology.
In addition to extensive research and academic administrative responsibilities, Lippman maintains an active clinical practice. As a clinician, he is well-respected by his peers, with recognition in every major “Top Doctor” listing including recently in the U.S. News Top Doctors. Author of more than 300 publications in high-impact journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, PNAS, and The Lancet, and chapters in major medical textbooks, Lippman has received many awards, among them the ASCO-American Cancer Society Award, AACR Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation Award, and the ASCO Statesman Award, and he is an elected member of the prestigious Association of American Physicians.
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C. Randal Mills, PhD
President and Chief Executive Officer, California Institute for Regenerative Medicine
[+] Biography
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C. Randal Mills, Ph.D. is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the state’s $3 billion stem cell agency. With nearly 300 programs in its portfolio, including over a dozen in or entering clinical trials, the agency is the world’s largest entity dedicated to the advancement of stem cell therapies and regenerative medicines. As a strong advocate for patients throughout his career, Dr. Mills’ mission at CIRM is to speed up the development of new treatments and cures by finding real-time solutions for the regulatory, clinical, manufacturing, and business problems that often slow down novel therapies.
Previously, Dr. Mills served as the CEO of Osiris Therapeutics, the world's first profitable stem cell company. In 2005 Osiris launched the first commercial stem cell product, Osteocel®, and in 2012, received the world's first approval for a stem cell drug, Prochymal®, to treat children suffering from graft vs. host disease, an often fatal side effect of a bone marrow transplant. Under his leadership Osiris developed and commercialized five cell therapy products responsible for more than $1 billion in cumulative sales.
Prior to joining Osiris, Dr. Mills was a co-founder and Vice President of Regeneration Technologies. Dr. Mills invented the company’s core technology, BioCleanse®, the first system accepted by the FDA for the sterilization of human tissue for transplantation. BioCleanse products have been used in over three million surgical procedures without a single case of disease transmission.
Dr. Mills currently serves as the Chairman of Tissue Banks International (TBI), the largest provider of ocular tissue for vision restoration. He also serves on the Board of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine and the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine Advisory Board.
He holds a Ph.D. in drug development from the University of Florida, where he also earned his bachelor's degree in microbiology and cell science and completed an internship in clinical pathology. He is married with two children and is a certified pilot.
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Brad Perkins, MD
Chief Medical Officer, Human Longevity, Inc.
[+] Biography
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Dr. Perkins is a visionary physician, scientist, and executive who is responsible for leading all clinical and therapeutic operations at the HLI. This includes collecting and utilizing phenotype data, development of the consumer clinics business, and guiding stem cell therapeutics.
Prior to joining HLI, Dr. Perkins was Executive Vice President for Strategy and Innovation, and Chief Transformation Officer at Vanguard Health Systems, a large multi-state, for-profit, integrated health services provider with nearly 46,000 employees. He helped transform Vanguard from a traditional fee for service healthcare model, to a fee for value, “population health” model. Some of his innovative solutions there included: establishing Accountable Care Organizations to improve primary care, implementing an award winning tele-radiology program, and starting a $167 million venture capital fund to support Vanguard’s transformation programs.
Dr. Perkins began his career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1989 after completing his residency training and chief residency in internal medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. At the CDC he led some of the most important and high profile programs and published more than 120 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters.
He first joined and then led the Meningitis and Special Pathogens Branch where he investigated global bacterial disease epidemics. He co-discovered the bacteria which causes Cat Scratch Diseases and conducted translational research leading to development of several new bacterial meningitis and pneumonia vaccines. In 2001 Dr. Perkins led the investigations into the anthrax attacks in the United States, the largest and highest profile investigation ever conducted by CDC. In 2005 he was appointed CDC’s Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, a position in which he managed a $11.2 billion budget, and 15,000 employees with offices in more than 50 countries. Working closely with the CDC Director, he built a $2 billion state-of-the-art emergency response capability and positioned the improvement of population health as a focus of the healthcare reform movement within the White House administration at that time.
Dr. Perkins is a member of the RAND Health Board, and he is the chairman of the advisory board for Esther Dyson’s nonprofit, HICCup, sponsor of the “Way to Wellville” community health competition. He received his BA in Microbiology and his MD from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and an MBA from Emory University. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine.
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Margo Roberts, PhD
Chief Scientific Officer, Kite Pharma
[+] Biography
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Dr. Roberts has more than 23 years of biomedical research experience in both biotechnology and academia. In her capacity as Principal Scientist and Director of Immune and Cell Therapy at Cell Genesys, Inc. (1990-1998), Dr. Roberts led the development of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) technology encompassing CAR design and function in T cells and stem cells, and related methodologies for T cell engineering. She oversaw the implementation of the CAR technology to HIV disease and under her leadership the CD4zeta CAR T cell research program culminated in the first CAR T cell clinical trial initiated in 1994. Dr. Roberts is inventor on the first set of CAR patents including 2nd generation CAR constructs that incorporate the costimulatory domains of receptors such as CD28 aimed at improving CAR T cell survival and function. Such CAR constructs are being employed today in CAR-engineered T cell clinical trials for cancer indications. Starting in 1999, Dr. Roberts was an Associate Professor at the University of Virginia for 13 years, pursuing interdisciplinary research in the area of immunity and inflammation. She is author on more than 25 scientific publications and inventor on 13 issued US patents and three published US patent applications related to CAR T cell technology and tumor vaccine therapies. Dr. Roberts was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University and at the Laboratoire de Génétique Moléculaire des Eucaryotes (LGME) of the CNRS in Strasbourg, France. She received both her B.Sc. with honors and her Ph.D. from the University of Leeds in England.
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Charles Theuer, MD, PhD
President and CEO, Tracon Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
[+] Biography
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Dr. Theuer has served as President and CEO of TRACON since July 2006. From 2004 to 2006, Dr. Theuer was the Chief Medical Officer and Vice President of Clinical Development at TargeGen, Inc., where he led the development of small molecule kinase inhibitors in oncology, ophthalmology and cardiovascular disease. Prior to joining TargeGen, Dr. Theuer was Director of Clinical Oncology at Pfizer. At Pfizer, Dr. Theuer led the clinical development of Sutent® in kidney cancer; Sutent was approved by the U.S. FDA in 2006 for the treatment of advanced kidney cancer. Dr. Theuer has also held senior positions at IDEC Pharmaceuticals and at the National Cancer Institute. In addition, he has held academic positions at the University of California, Irvine, where he was Assistant Professor in the Division of Surgical Oncology and Department of Medicine. Dr. Theuer received a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. He completed a general surgery residency program at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and was board certified in general surgery in 1997. Dr. Theuer’s previous research involved immunotoxin and cancer vaccine development, translational work in cancer patients, and gastrointestinal cancer epidemiology.
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Judith Varner, PhD
Professor of Pathology, UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center
[+] Biography
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The Varner Lab studies the molecular mechanisms by which the tumor microenvironment promotes tumor growth and metastasis. Our most recent focus is on understanding the roles that inflammation, angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis play in promoting tumor growth and spread. Tumor inflammation promotes angiogenesis, immunosuppression and tumor growth, but the mechanisms controlling inflammatory cell recruitment to tumors are not well understood. Our lab recently found that chemoattractants activating G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) and Toll-like/IL-1 receptors (TLR/IL1Rs) all promote tumor inflammation by activating the PI3-kinase isoform p110γ in Gr1+CD11b+ myeloid cells. PI3kinase gamma then activates integrin α4β1 to promote myeloid cell trafficking to tumors and subsequent angiogenesis and immunosuppression. We have determined that antagonists of PI3kinase gamma and integrin α4β1 are potent suppressors of tumor inflammation, angiogenesis, growth and metastasis.
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Symposium Organizer:
Scott Lippman, MD
Director
UCSD Moores Cancer Center
Symposium Organizer:
Ida Deichaite, PhD
Director, Industry Relations
UCSD Moores Cancer Center
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Symposium Chair:
David Cheresh, PhD
Associate Director for Translational Research
Professor of Pathology
UCSD Moores Cancer Center
Symposium Co-Chair:
Catriona Jamieson, MD, PhD
Director, Stem Cell Research Program
Associate Professor of Medicine
UCSD Moores Cancer Center
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