Scientific Advisory Council
Kenneth C. Anderson, M.D.
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Dr. Anderson is the Kraft Family Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of both the LeBow Institute for Myeloma Therapeutics and the Jerome Lipper Center for Multiple Myeloma at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He is a Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Research Scientist and an American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor.
For the past 30 years, Dr. Anderson’s laboratory and clinical research has focused on multiple myeloma, including that development of laboratory and animal models of the tumor in its microenvironment, which resulted in the identification of novel targets and the validation of targeted therapies. His team led preclinical and clinical studies of the proteasome inhibitor bortezomib and the immunomodulatory drug lenalidomide, both of which received rapid FDA approval for the treatment of myeloma and are now markedly improving patient outcomes. Dr. Anderson’s work has transformed myeloma therapy, offering great promise even for patients with other hematologic malignancies and solid tumors.
A graduate of Johns Hopkins Medical School, Dr. Anderson trained in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital, then completed hematology, medical oncology, and tumor immunology training at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. His awards include the 2003 Waldenström’s Award, the 2005 Robert A. Kyle Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2007 Joseph H. Burchenal Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement in Clinical Research, and the 2008 William Dameshek Prize. He was elected into the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars in 2009 and, in 2010, to the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academies and the U.K.’s Royal College of Pathologists.
William Cho, PhD
Queen Elizabeth Hospital
Dr. Cho is a member of the Department of Clinical Oncology at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Hong Kong, China. Dr. Cho is an international opinion leader in the fields of lung cancer, oncoproteins and biomarkers. He is widely published in the area as well as frequent presenter at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Meeting and the American Association of Clinical Research Meeting. He is an editorial board member of various international journals, including the Expert Review of Proteomics, European Journal of Pharmacology and the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. Dr. Cho is a reviewer for Science Foundation Ireland and The National Medical Research Council (Singapore).
James E. Darnell, Jr., M.D.
The Rockefeller University
Dr. Darnell is the Vincent Astor Professor Emeritus at The Rockefeller University. An internationally renowned molecular biologist, James Darnell uses biochemistry and genetic analysis to reveal the fundamental mechanisms of intracellular signaling and gene regulation in animal cells.
Dr. Darnell received his M.D. in 1955 from the Washington University School of Medicine. His career has included poliovirus research with Harry Eagle at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, research with Francois Jacob at the Institut Pasteur in Paris and academic appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Columbia University. In 1974, Dr. Darnell joined Rockefeller University as Vincent Astor Professor, and from 1990 to 1991 was vice president for academic affairs.
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, received the 2003 National Medal of Science, and the 2002 Albert Lasker Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science. Dr. Darnell is the originating author of Molecular Cell Biology, a seminal textbook that he co-wrote with David Baltimore and Harvey Lodish. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a foreign member of the Royal Society and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Darnell was the Hope Funds Honoree in Basic Science in 2010. He and his wife Kristin were Honorary co-chairs of the Hope Funds 2011 Gala.
George Demetri, MD
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Dr. Demetri is a medical oncologist at the Dana Farber Institute and is a key-opinion-leader in sarcomas and gastro-intestinal stromal tumors (GIST). Dr. Demetri received his MD from Stanford University in 1983, followed by an internal medicine residency and chief residency at the University of Washington Hospital, Seattle, and a fellowship in medical oncology at Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) in 1989. He is director of the Center for Sarcoma and Bone Oncology at DFCI, director of the Ludwig Center at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, and executive director for Clinical and Translational Research at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. George is the Hope Funds Award of Excellence Honoree for Clinical Development in 2010.
Wolfram Goessling, MD, PhD
Brigham and Women’s Hospital & Dana-Farber Cancer Center, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Goessling is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Assistant Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard Medical School/MIT. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Witten/Herdecke Medical School, Germany. Dr. Goessling completed his residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he also served as Chief Medical Resident. He then completed fellowships in medical oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and in gastroenterology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He conducted postdoctoral research with Dr. Leonard Zon at The Children’s Hospital Boston. Dr. Goessling’s research and clinical activities focus on liver cancer and stem cell development, contributing to the work that led the first drug discovered in zebrafish to clinical trial. He has received a BASF Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the George Brecher Prize from the International Society of Experimental Hematology; he was the 2009 William Randolph Hearst Young Investigator at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
William C. Hahn, M.D., Ph.D.
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute & The Broad Institute at MIT
Dr. Hahn is an associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Hahn received his MD and PhD from Harvard Medical School in 1994. He then completed clinical training in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and medical oncology at DFCI. He conducted his postdoctoral studies with Dr. Robert Weinberg at the Whitehead Institute and joined the faculty at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in 2001. Dr. Hahn was elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation in, 2005; won the Kimmel Scholar Award in 2002, the Howard Temin Award at the National Cancer Institute in 2001, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Clinical Scientist Development Award in 2000, and the Wilson S. Stone Memorial Award at MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2000.
Malcolm A.S. Moore, DPhil
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute
Dr. Moore received his Bachelor of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Oxford. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed a Prize Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was a Queen Elizabeth II Visiting Fellow and Senior Research Scientist and Head of the Laboratory of Developmental Biology at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, Australia. Since 1974 he has been a Member at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research and heads the James Ewing Laboratory of Developmental Hematopoiesis. He is perhaps best known for identifying and purifying a human growth factor, G-CSF, that stimulates white blood cell production (neutrophils). In collaboration with Amgen, recombinant G-CSF (Neupogen) was developed. This therapy has significantly improved survival in cancer patients. Malcolm is the Hope Funds Award of Excellence Honoree for Clinical Development in 2008.
Scott Powers, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Cold Spring Harbor Labs
Scott has a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Columbia University. His past positions include: being a Postdoctoral Fellow at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; a Staff Investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistryat Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; a Senior Scientist at Onyx Pharmaceuticals; a Scientific Director at Amplicon/Tularik in the Genomics Division; an Adjunct Associate Professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; and an Associate Professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
John Quackenbush, PhD
Harvard University/Dana Farber Cancer Institute
Dr. Quackenbush is Professor of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Harvard University. John is a thought leader in genomic approaches to cancer, and a highly creative thinker. He helped write the guidelines for evaluating microarray data for the Nature family of journals, and runs a very productive research group at Dana Farber.
Genomics has transformed biological science not by producing genome sequences and gene catalogs for a range of species, but rather through the development of technologies that allow us to survey, on a global scale, organisms and their gene, protein, and metabolic patterns of expression. The challenge is no longer how to generate these vast bodies of genomic data, but rather in how to best collect, manage, and analyze the data. As a community, we have a long history of studying biological systems and our best strategy moving forward is to leverage that knowledge so as to best interpret genome scale datasets. Our research group focuses on methods spanning the laboratory to the laptop that are designed to use genomic and computational approaches to reveal the underlying biology. In particular, we have been looking at patterns of gene expression in cancer with the goal of elucidating the networks and pathways that are fundamental in the development and progression of the disease. Education: Ph.D., 1990, University of California at Los Angeles.
Joan M. Robbins, Ph.D.
Tocagen
Prior to joing Tocagen as Chief Science Officer, Dr. Robbins was the Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President of Adventrx Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Prior to joining Adventrx, Joan was employed by Immusol, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company specializing in anticancer and antiviral therapeutics, where she held several positions, including Vice President, Product Development, Senior Director, Product Development, and Director, Therapeutics. From 1994 to 1995, she was Research Scientist and Project Leader for Cancer Research at Chiron where she developed y-IFN recombinant retroviral immuno-gene therapy for cancer, assays for clinical evaluation in Phase I, and tk-recombinant retroviral gene therapy for brain tumors. From 1992 to 1993, Dr. Robbins was a Post Graduate Researcher at University of California, San Diego, where she developed a novel DNA-based immunotherapeutic for treatment of Her2/neu expressing tumors. From 1990 to 1991, she was a Research Fellow at the Garvin Institute for Medical Research, Centre for Immunology in Sydney, Australia, and from 1981 to 1989, Dr. Robbins was a Microbiologist at the Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Biology at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. Robbins received her B.S. degree in genetics from the University of California, Davis, and a Ph.D. degree in genetics from George Washington University, Washington D.C.
Takashi Shimokawa, Ph.D
Karolinska Institute
Dr. Shimokawa is a member of the prestigious Karolinska Institute in Sweden. He is a leading researcher in the field of oncogenes. His work is primarily focused on oncogenes and oncoproteins involved in colorectal cancer.
Frank J. Slack, PhD
Yale University
Dr. Slack is an associate professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology. Dr. Slack joined the Yale faculty in 2000 after completing his undergraduate work in microbiology, biochemistry and molecular genetics at the University of Cape Town, his doctoral work in molecular biology at Tufts University and post-doctoral training at Stanford University School of Medicine and Harvard University. He is also a member of the Yale Cancer Center. Dr. Slack is a pioneer in the field of micro-RNA.
Robert A. Weinberg Ph.D.
Whitehead Institute, MIT
Dr. Weinberg is the Founding Member of Whitehead Institute, Robert A. Weinberg is a pioneer in cancer research. He is most widely known for his discoveries of the first human oncogene – a gene that causes normal cells to form tumors – and the first tumor suppressor gene. Dr. Weinberg’s lab continues to study the molecular mechanisms that control the growth of human tumors and their ability to seed distant growths —metastases. This work has revealed ways in which normal stromal (connective tissue) cells recruited into a tumor aid the growth and survival of the cancer cells. In addition, by studying genes that are normally active early in embryonic development, Dr. Weinberg and colleagues have discovered mechanisms by which cancer cells in a primary tumor acquire the ability to invade nearby tissues and to spread to distant sites in the body.
Dr. Weinberg, who received his Ph.D. in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969, has held research positions at the Weizmann Institute and the Salk Institute. In 1982, Weinberg helped found Whitehead Institute, joined the faculty as a professor of biology at MIT, and published his landmark paper “Mechanism of Activation of a Human Oncogene” in the journal Nature. In 1999, another major paper, “Creation of Human Tumor Cells with Defined Genetic Elements,” was also published in the journal Nature.
Dr. Weinberg is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and received the National Medal of Science in 1997. He is the founder of the biotechnology company, Verastem.
Professor Bryan R.G. Williams, Ph.D.
Monash Institute
Professor Williams has over 30 years of experience in basic and pre-clinical cancer research. Since January 2006, he has been the director of the Monash Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia. From 1991 to 2005, Professor Williams was Chairman of the Department of Cancer Biology, Lerner Research Institute, The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio. From 1993 to 2005, he was Professor, Department of Genetics at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. From 1998 to 2005, he was an Adjunct Professor in the Departments of Chemistry at Cleveland State University and Kent State University, also both in Ohio. Professor Williams holds a BSc. (Hons) (Microbiology) and Ph.D. (Microbiology) from the University of Otago, New Zealand. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.