Eytan Ruppin, MD, PhD

Chief

Cancer Data Science Lab (CDSL)

Center for Cancer Research

National Cancer Institute

“Next generation transcriptomics based precision oncology”

Eytan Ruppin received his MD and PhD (Computer Science) from Tel-Aviv University where he has served as a professor of Computer Science & Medicine since 1995, conducting computational multi-disciplinary research spanning a wide variety of topics, including neuroscience, machine learning and systems biology. He joined the University of Maryland in July 2014 as director of its center for bioinformatics and computational biology and moved to the NCI in January 2018 as chief of its newly established cancer data science branch (CDSL). The Ruppin lab has developed many leading algorithms for genome scale metabolic modeling. Together with their collaborators, they co-identified the first metabolic synthetic lethal (SL) drug target to treat cancer (Nature, 2011), were the first to identify metabolic SLs in cancer in a genome-wide manner (Molecular Systems Biology, 2011) and the first to infer cancer SLs by mining patient’s tumor data (Cell, 2014). More recently, together with our experimental collaborators, we have developed and applied new computational approaches for SL/transcriptomics based precision oncology (Nature Comm 2018, Molecular Systems Biology 2019, Cancer Cell 2019, Nature Cell Biology 2019, Science Advances 2021, Cell 2021) and for immunotherapy (Nat Med 2018, Cell 2018, JAMA Onc 2019, Nature Cancer 2020). Eytan is a co-founder of a few startup companies involved in precision medicine and cancer drug discovery, including Metabomed, Medaware and Pangea Therapeutics. He is an editorial board member of EMBO Reports and Molecular Systems Biology and a fellow of the International Society of Computational Biology (ISCB).

Nikhil Wagle, MD

Assistant Professor of Medicine

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School

“Accelerating precision oncology through patient partnered cancer research“

Nikhil Wagle is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He is also the Director of Count Me In, a nonprofit research initiative that aims to transform cancer care by empowering cancer patients to accelerate cancer research by sharing their samples, their medical information, and their voices.

Dr. Wagle leads a translational research program in cancer genomics and cancer precision medicine, with a particular focus on metastatic breast cancer. The major goals of his work are to better understand the biology of cancer and to develop new ways to overcome or prevent drug resistance in patients with advanced cancer. Ultimately, his research aims to develop new therapeutic strategies and to identify characteristics of tumors that might improve clinical decision-making for patients.

Dr. Wagle has been a pioneer in the development and use of next generation sequencing for cancer precision medicine, and has made major contributions to the understanding mechanisms of resistance to targeted therapies in multiple cancer types. Over the past several years, he has focused on understanding the genomics of metastatic breast cancer, particularly through identifying and characterizing multiple clinical mechanisms of resistance to endocrine therapies, CDK4/6 inhibitors, and other therapies in ER+ metastatic breast cancer.

Dr. Wagle received his MD from Harvard Medical School and completed his residency training in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he also served as chief medical resident, and completed his fellowship training in hematology/oncology in the Dana-Farber/Partners program.

Dr. Wagle also co-founded Doctors for America, a grassroots organization of over 18,000 doctors and medical student in the United States who are working to build a better health care system for all Americans.

Jeffrey C. Rathmell, PhD

Director

Vanderbilt Center for Immunobiology

Vanderbilt University Medical Center

“Local and Systemic Nutrients and Tumor Infiltrating Immune Cells”

Dr. Rathmell studies mechanisms that regulate lymphocyte fate and differentiation in inflammatory diseases and cancer. He has an interdisciplinary research program with a focus on genetic and biochemical approaches to discover mechanisms of immunometabolism that drive or influence immune-related diseases. Following a PhD in Immunology at Stanford University and postdoctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania, his work as faculty at Duke University and Vanderbilt University showed that the metabolism of lymphocytes was dynamically regulated, and that each T cell subset adopts a specific metabolic program that can be targeted to modulate cell function and fate. He joined Vanderbilt in 2015 to direct the Vanderbilt Center for Immunobiology and is Leader for the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center Program in Host-Tumor Interactions. His awards include Scholar of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Bernard Osher Fellow of the American Asthma Foundation, and William Paul Distinguished Innovator of the Lupus Research Alliance.

Greg M. Delgoffe, PhD

Associate Professor

Tumor Microenvironment Center

Department of Immunology

University of Pittsburgh

“Metabolic causes and consequences of T cell exhaustion in cancer”

Greg M. Delgoffe is an Associate Professor of Immunology at the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. Dr. Delgoffe obtained his Ph.D at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 2010, studying the role of the nutrient sensor mTOR in T cell fate and function. He then went on to complete postdoctoral training at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, identifying signals that stabilize regulatory T cells solid tumors. He began his independent research group in 2014, focused around the metabolic regulation of T cell fate in cancer. Since its inception, Dr. Delgoffe’s lab has worked to both understand the metabolic deficiencies experienced by T cells as they infiltrate tumors and leverage that insight into metabolic strategies to bolster antitumor immunity. His group has uncovered that metabolic defects like loss of functional mitochondria and competition for nutrients are central to T cell dysfunction in cancer, which suggests that all forms of immune-based therapy may be improved by metabolic modulation. Much of his work has been translated into novel therapeutics as well as clinical trials repurposing metabolic drugs as immunometabolic agents to improve immunotherapy responses. He has been competitive for funding from federal, foundation, and industry sources and has received several awards for innovation, including a Stand Up To Cancer Innovative Research Grant, the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Mark Foundation Emerging Leader Award, and the Cancer Research Institute’s Lloyd J. Old STAR Award.

Loren D. Walensky, MD, PhD

Professor of Pediatrics

Harvard Medical School

Attending Physician and Principal Investigator

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

“Dissecting and Targeting the Activation Mechanism of Pro-Apoptotic BAX”

Loren D. Walensky, MD, PhD is a Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, Principal Investigator and Attending Physician in the Department of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Children’s Hospital Boston, and Director of the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD Program. He received his B.A. in Chemistry from Princeton University, MD and PhD degrees from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and trained in pediatrics and pediatric hematology/oncology at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Walensky’s research focuses on the chemical biology of deregulated apoptotic, transcriptional, and metabolic pathways in cancer, with a special emphasis on pediatric leukemias. The group develops and applies “stapled peptides†that preserve the primary and secondary structure of biologically-active motifs as new chemical probes and prototype therapeutics to respectively dissect and target pathologic signaling pathways in cancer and other diseases. Dr. Walensky is a current recipient of an Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Cancer Institute and was named to Nature Biotechnology’s roster of Top 20 Translational Researchers of 2019.

Aashish Manglik, MD., PhD.

Associate Professor

Pharmaceutical Chemistry

Department of Anesthesia

UC San Francisco

“Molecular puzzles in G protein-coupled receptor signaling”

Aashish Manglik, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Anesthesia at UCSF. Aashish received his B.A. in Biology and Chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis and his MD/PhD from Stanford University. His graduate work with Brian Kobilka focused on understanding the atomic basis of action of G protein-coupled receptors, notably the adrenergic, muscarinic, and opioid receptors important in various aspects of human physiology. He initially started his lab as the first Stanford Distinguished Fellow at Stanford University in 2016, with a focus on understanding transmembrane signal transduction. He subsequently started as an Assistant Professor at UCSF in 2017. Aashish has been named a Pew, Searle, Klingenstein, Vallee, and Mallinckrodt Scholar and is a recipient of the NIH Director’s Early Independence Award.

Rosalie Sears, PhD

Professor of Molecular and Medical Genetics

Co-Director, Brenden-Colson Center for Pancreatic Care, School of Medicine

Oregon Health & Science University

“Insights into the role of MYC in PDAC progression, metastasis, and therapy resistance”

Dr. Sears received her Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Reed College (1986), Portland Oregon. She received her PhD in Cell Biology from Vanderbilt University (1993), Nashville Tennessee, and conducted her post-doctoral studies at Duke University in the Genetics Department. Dr. Sears is a full professor in the Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics at Oregon Health & Science University. She is Co-Director of the Brenden-Colson Center for Pancreatic Care and a senior member in the Knight Cancer Institute. Dr. Sears has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Foundation, as well as several other private foundations. She has received both research and business innovation awards in the areas of cancer biology, therapeutics, and technology advancement.

Elda Grabocka, PhD

Assistant Professor of Cancer Biology & Surgery

NCI-designated Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center

Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health

“Stress Granules: a stress-adaptive mechanism in KRAS-driven pancreatic tumorigenesis”

Dr. Elda Grabocka received her Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Washington College. She completed her PhD in Molecular Pharmacology and Structural Biology at Thomas Jefferson University and her postdoctoral studies at the NYU Langone Medical Center. Dr. Grabocka is currently an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Cancer Biology and Surgery at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer at Thomas Jefferson University. Her research investigates pancreatic cancer’s ability to hijack the mechanisms by which cells adapt to stress stimuli and has uncovered that mutant KRAS promotes the assembly of stress-resistance organelles called stress granules. Ratcheting up this mechanism enables pancreatic tumors to grow under adverse conditions and enhance their resistance to chemotherapy. Dr. Grabocka has received several awards including a V Foundation Scholar Award, a Margaret Q. Landenberger Foundation Award, and a R37 Early-Stage Investigator MERIT Award from the National Cancer Institute

Judith Campisi, PhD

Professor

Buck Institute for Research on Aging

“Aging and cancer: Rival demons or reluctant allies?”

Judith Campisi received a PhD in biochemistry from the State University of New York Stony Brook, and postdoctoral training at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. In 1984, she joined the Boston University Medical School faculty as Assistant and Associate Professor, then moved to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as Senior Scientist in 1991. In 2002, she started a second laboratory at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, where she is Professor.  

At both institutions, Campisi established a broad program to understand the relationship between aging and disease, with an emphasis on how cellular senescence promotes inflammation, cancer and degenerative diseases. Her laboratory made pioneering discoveries in these areas, and continues to challenge and alter existing paradigms. She has several long-standing national and international collaborations, and mentors many students and fellows.  

Campisi received numerous awards, including MERIT awards from the National Institute on Aging, and awards from the AlliedSignal Corporation, Gerontological Society of America and American Federation for Aging Research, the Longevity prize from the IPSEN Foundation, and the first international Olav Thon Foundation prize. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Association for Cancer Research, and the US National Academy of Sciences. She serves on numerous national and international editorial and scientific advisory boards.  

Katherine Aird, PhD

Associate Professor

UPMC Hillman Cancer Center

University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine

“Surprising roles of p16 in senescence”

The Aird lab has two main areas of investigation: 1) mechanisms and pathological implications of cellular senescence; and 2) metabolic reprogramming during tumorigenesis in ovarian cancer and melanoma. More information can be found at: airdlab.com

Charles Swanton, MD PhD, FRCP, FMedSci, FAACR, FRS

Professor

Cancer Evolution and Genome Instability Laboratory

Francis Crick Institute

UCL Cancer Institute, London, UK

“Chromosomal instability and immune evasion in cancer evolution”

Charles completed his MDPhD training in 1999 at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories and Cancer Research UK clinician scientist/medical oncology training in 2008. Charles is a senior group leader of the Cancer Evolution and Genome Instability Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute  and combines his research with clinical duties at UCLH, as a thoracic oncologist, focussed on how tumours evolve over space and time. Charles research branched evolutionary histories of solid tumours, processes that drive cancer cell-to-cell variation in the form of new cancer mutations or chromosomal instabilities, and the impact of such cancer diversity on effective immune surveillance and clinical outcome. Charles is chief investigator of TRACERx, a lung cancer evolutionary study and the national PEACE autopsy program.

Charles was made Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in April 2011, appointed Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2015, awarded the Napier Professor in Cancer by the Royal Society in 2016, appointed Cancer Research UK’s Chief Clinician in 2017, and elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2018 and Fellow of the Academy of American Association for Cancer Research in 2020. Charles is an editorial board member of Cell, Plos Medicine, Cancer Discovery and Annals of Oncology and an advisory board member for Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology and Cancer Cell. In 2016 he co-founded Achilles Therapeutics, a UCL/CRUK/Francis Crick Institute spin-out company, assessing the efficacy of T cells targeting clonal neoantigens. 

Charles has been awarded several prizes including the Stand up to Cancer Translational Cancer Research Prize (2015), GlaxoSmithkline Biochemical Society Prize (2016), San Salvatore prize for Cancer Research (2017) and the Ellison-Cliffe Medal, Royal Society of Medicine (2017), recipient of the Gordon Hamilton Fairley Medal (2018), Massachusetts General Hospital, Jonathan Kraft Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research (May 2018), the ESMO Award for Translational Cancer Research (2019), Addario Lung Cancer Foundation Award and Lectureship, International Lung Cancer Congress (July 2020) and the Weizmann Institute Sergio Lambroso Award in Cancer Research (2021).

Michael Hoffman, PhD

Senior Scientist

Princess Margaret Cancer Centre

Associate Professor

Departments of Medical Biophysics and Computer Science

University of Toronto

“The ungracious guest: how the human papillomavirus (HPV) changes the local host epigenome and transcriptome to promote tumorigenesis”

Michael Hoffman creates predictive computational models to understand interactions between genome, epigenome, and phenotype in human cancers. He implemented the genome annotation method Segway, which simplifies interpretation of large multivariate genomic datasets, and was a linchpin of the NIH ENCODE Project analysis. He is a principal investigator at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Associate Professor in the Departments of Medical Biophysics and Computer Science, University of Toronto. He was named a CIHR New Investigator and has received several awards for his academic work, including the NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award, and the Ontario Early Researcher Award.

Alana Welm, PhD

Senior Director of Basic Science

Professor, Department of Oncological Sciences

University of Utah, School of Medicine

“Using patient-derived models for drug discovery and functional precision oncology in advanced breast cancer”

The research in Dr. Welm’s laboratory is focused on solving the problem of breast cancer metastasis using in vivo modeling of mouse and human breast cancers. Dr. Welm’s group discovered that the Ron kinase pathway is an important facilitator of breast cancer metastasis through its unique dual function in tumor cells and in resident macrophages. Current areas of research include (1) pre-clinical studies of various Ron inhibitors for treatment and prevention of metastatic breast cancer; (2) pre-clinical and early clinical studies of Ron/Met inhibitors in bone metastatic cancers; (3) discovering molecular mechanisms by which Ron kinases promote metastasis through cell-autonomous and non cell-autonomous pathways; and (4) refining “precision medicine†for metastatic breast cancer using functional assays in patient-derived breast tumor grafts and organoid models.

Alice Soragni, PhD

Assistant Professor, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery

University of California, Los Angeles

Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center

“Tumor organoids to model rare cancers for functional precision medicine application”

Recording note: Dr. Soragni’s presentation is not available.

Dr. Alice Soragni’s lab focuses on two major and overlapping areas of research. First, they investigate how protein aggregation affects cancer development and progression, with a special focus on p53 aggregation. They exploit protein aggregation as a therapeutic target by designing peptides that interfere with the process. Second, and in parallel, the lab focuses on developing clinically-relevant organoid models for cancer biology, as well as drug discovery and development applications. In particular, they establish tumor organoids from surgical specimens (patient-derived tumor organoids) and perform high-throughput drug screenings to individualize cancer therapy to each patient.

Ashani T. Weeraratna, PhD

Chair, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

Bloomberg Distinguished Professor

Professor

Johns Hopkins University

“Age against the machine: How aging disrupts the homeostasis of cancer”

Shreya Raghavan., PhD

Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering

Texas A&M University

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Nanomedicine

Houston Methodist Research Institute

“A biomedical engineer’s perspective on primary and metastatic tumor microenvironments”

Marina Pasca di Magliano, PhD

Professor, Department of Surgery

University of Michigan Ann Arbor

“Cellular crosstalk in the pancreatic cancer microenvironment”

Madeleine Oudin, PhD

Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Tufts University

“Roles of the extracellular matrix in chemoresistance”

Thomas Gajewski, MD, PhD

AbbVie Foundation Professor of Pathology

The University of Chicago

“Mechanisms of microbiome impacting cancer immunotherapy“

Ravid Straussman, MD, PhD

The Roel C. Buck Career Development Chair

Weizmann Institute of Science

“Characterizing the tumor microbiome and its effects on response to therapy“