Scientific Advisory Council
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).
Harvard Medical School
Dr. Goessling is an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He received his MD Degree from University of Witten/Herdecke Medical School, Germany, was a resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Goessling conducts basic research in liver cancer at Massachusetts General 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.
Jonathan Lewis, PhD, MD
CEO, Ziopharm, Inc.
Dr. Lewis is Chief Executive Officer and a Director, serving in these capacities since January 2004. From July 1994 until June 2001, Dr. Lewis served as Professor of Surgery and Medicine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He has been actively involved in leading transnational and clinical research in cancer, and is widely recognized by patient advocacy groups. He has received numerous honors and awards in medicine and science, including the ASCO Young Investigator Award, the Yale University Ohse Award, and the Royal College of Surgeons Trubshaw Medal. He served as Chief Medical Officer and Chairman of the Medical Board at Antigenics, Inc. from June 2000 until November 2003. He serves as a Director on the Board of Delcath Systems, Inc. and of POPPA (the Police Organization Providing Peer Assistance) of the New York Police Department (NYPD). He also serves on the Medical Advisory Board of the Sarcoma Foundation of America.
Scott Powers, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Cold Spring Harbor Labs
Scott has a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Columbia University. His past postions include: being a Postdoctoral Fellow at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; a Staff Investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; an Assistant Professor in the Deptartment of Biochemistryat Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; an Associate Professor in the Deptartment 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.
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.