The Cancer Questions Project, Part 13: Bruce Chabner
Dr Bruce Chabner has had immense experience in the discipline of cancer drug discovery and development. During his career at the National Cancer Institute, he worked as a Senior Investigator in the Laboratory of Chemical Pharmacology, Chief of the Clinical Pharmacology Branch, Director of the Clinical Oncology Program, and Director of the Division of Cancer Treatment. His research significantly added to the development of high dose chemotherapy regimens and standard therapies for lymphoma. Additionally, his research led to the development of Taxol. He currently serves as a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of Clinical Research at the MGH Cancer Center at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The Cancer Questions Project, Part 12: Siddhartha Mukherjee
Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee is a physician-scientist with a persistent scientific and clinical interest in acute myeloid leukemia, hematopoiesis, novel therapeutic drug development and cancer biology. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. He has published articles in Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, The New York Times, and Cell. Dr. Mukherjee’s research lab at Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center studies the biology of blood development malignant and premalignant diseases such as myelodysplasia and acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). His goal is to develop new drugs against diseases. He currently serves as an Associate Professor of medicine at Columbia University Medical Center.
The Cancer Questions Project, Part 11: David Steensma
Dr. David Steensma specializes in care and research for myelodysplastic syndromes and leukemia. He and colleagues were the first to identify and understand the clinical implications of the clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP). He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Clinical Oncology responsible for the “Art of Oncology” section and has more than 150 publications in peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Steensma currently serves as an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, consulting physician at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, and a faculty member in the Adult Leukemia Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
The Cancer Questions Project, Part 10: Renata Pasqualini
Renata Pasqualini, is the Chief, Division of Cancer Biology, Department of Radiation Oncology at Rutgers Cancer Institute and Rutgers New Jersey Medical School having previously served as Associate Director for Translational Research and Chief of the Division of Molecular Medicine at the University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center. She has published more than 200 joint peer-reviewed research manuscripts and have more than 100 patents filed worldwide. Dr. Pasqualini’s lab discovered Prohibitin-TP01 which specifically targets the vasculature that nourishes white fat, a critical contributing factor in poor prostate cancer outcome. Preclinical studies in mouse models showed that TP01 treatment reduced white fat and resulted in ~30% weight reduction. Her goal is to successfully translate Prohibitin-TP01 into the clinic as a new agent for obese men with advanced prostate cancer.
The Cancer Questions Project, Part 9: Ellin Berman
Ellin Berman is a board-certified medical oncologist and hematologist with a clinical and research focus on new drug development in acute and chronic leukemias, including acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) and chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). As a member of the multidisciplinary Leukemia Disease Management Team at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), she works closely with the many individuals who make up the clinical and research programs there. Along with other members of the Leukemia Service, she is involved in clinical trials of new drugs that hopefully will lead to new treatment approaches for these diseases. She has also worked closely with the Food and Drug Administration in this regard, and for the last 20 years have helped review new drug applications for the treatment of leukemia. She is a member of KSKCC’s Institutional Review Board (IRB), the committee that approves, monitors, and reviews research studies at the Center. She is an Associate Editor for the journal Leukemia Research, and reviews articles for a number of other journals including Blood, the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Cancer Research, The Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine.
The Cancer Questions Project, Part 8: Seema Khan
Dr. Seema A. Khan is Professor of Surgery in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, and the Bluhm Family Professor of Cancer Research. She is the Co-leader of the Women’s Cancer Research Program at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her research focuses on applying biomarker knowledge to improve breast cancer risk stratification and develop preventive interventions for high risk women. Current studies include an examination of the effects of progesterone antagonists in women with breast cancer, and a study of breast cancer risk biomarkers in benign breast biopsy samples. In addition, Dr. Khan’s group is working on the development of transdermal delivery of drugs to the breast. She chairs a Phase III trial for the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group which will investigate the role of local therapy for the primary tumor in women presenting with Stage IV breast cancer. Recently completed research includes a case/control study of hormone levels in nipple aspirate fluid.
The Cancer Questions Project, Part 7: Kanti Rai
Kanti R. Rai, MD, is professor of medicine at The Karches Center for Oncology Research, The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research; director of the Center for Oncology and Cell Biology, Long Island Jewish Medical Center; and professor of medicine and molecular medicine at Hofstra University Northwell School of Medicine. He has been involved in diagnosing and treating Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia for almost 40 years and the staging system that bears his name came out of his early breakthrough research. His research led to the eventual development of idelalisib (Zydelig) as a second-line treatment for patients with CLL and ibrutinib (Imbruvica), used to treat mantle cell lymphoma, CLL, and Waldenström macroglobulinemia. He has been collaborating with other CLL scientists at The Feinstein Institute for years establishing the importance of fludarabine, now a standard-of-care treatment for CLL, and demonstrating the effectiveness of cladribine in treating hairy cell leukemia. Dr.Rai is an active investigator in the Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Research Consortium, the International Workshop on CLL, and Cancer and Leukemia Group B. He is a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Association for Cancer Research and the American Society of Hematology (ASH).
The Cancer Questions Project, Part 6: Wadih Arap
Wadih Arap is the Director of the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey at University Hospital and Chief, Division of Hematology/Oncology in the Department of Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. He has served on the National Cancer Institute’s Board of Scientific Counselors, several review boards for the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Defense’s Prostate and Breast Cancer Research Program. His research is based on the premise that differential protein expression in disease tissues enables the development of novel, targeted drugs to treat human disease. By integrating genomic analyses and analytical high-throughput technology, functional protein-protein interactions can be manipulated to develop clinical strategies for effective disease management.