Oncology
beyond the tumor

Dr. Ellis is the The Ruben Distinguished Chair in Gastroenterology Cancer Research and a professor in the Departments of Surgical Oncology, and Molecular & Cellular Oncology at MDACC. He previously served as interim chair, Department of Cancer Biology (2008-2012), Director of the Metastasis Research Center (2010-2012), and Director of the Colorectal Cancer (CRC) Translational Research Program (2007-2013) at MDACC. He is currently Executive Director for Translational Medicine for MDACC’s Global Academic Program. Dr. Ellis has an active research laboratory that is focused on the biology of colorectal cancer and therapeutic targets. Dr. Ellis is active at the national level by playing leadership roles in ASCO and the AACR. He is currently a member of the ASCO Board of Directors. Dr. Ellis was co-program director of the AACR annual meeting in 2009 and 2011, and has served as course co-director of the AACR/ASCO Methods in Clinical Cancer Research Workshop (Vail Course, 2012-2014) and is currently co-director for the EORTC-ESMO-AACR-ECCO Methods in Clinical Cancer Research Workshop. Dr. Ellis serves as Vice Chair of SWOG, Translational Medicine, and Vice Chair of the Hope Foundation, SWOG’s philanthropic arm. He is currently co-chair of the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) National Clinical Trials Network Core Correlative Sciences Committee. Dr. Ellis is also on the board of directors for the Canines-N-Kids Foundation. He currently serves on the ECOG/ACRIN data safety monitoring committees and the Scientific Audit Committee of the EORTC (Brussels, Belgium). Dr. Ellis is a Deputy Editor for JAMA Oncology.

David Carbone is Professor of Internal Medicine, Director of the James Thoracic Oncology Center at the OSUMC. He graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College in 1977 and received an MD and a PhD in Molecular Biology and Genetics at Johns Hopkins University in 1985. After an Internal Medicine internship and residency at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, he did a Medical Oncology fellowship at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD. At Vanderbilt he was Director of the Thoracic/Head and Neck Cancer Program, Director of a SPORE in Lung Cancer for 11 years. He was recruited to The Ohio State University in 2012 to direct the James Thoracic Oncology Center. His research interests have been focused on lung cancer and specifically proteomic and expression signature development, lung cancer genetics, tumor-associated immunosuppression mechanisms, proteogenomic profiling of lung cancers to guide the development of novel therapeutics, and targeting novel immunosuppression mechanisms. He has over 250 peer-reviewed publications, has served on the Board of Scientific Counselors, and has continuous NCI funding since early in his career. He is currently Chair of the Lung Biology subcommittee for the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group and Past-President of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC).

Prof. Michal Lotem is a senior physician and researcher, serving as Head of the Center for Melanoma and Cancer Immunotherapy, Sharett Institute of Oncology, Hadassah University Hospital, and senior lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In parallel to intensive clinical work, she runs a scientific translational research lab focusing on tumor vaccines and cell-based immunotherapies for melanoma. She has co-authored over 70 peer-reviewed publications and is a member of several medical societies including the Melanoma Research Alliance, Society of Melanoma Research, European Association of Cancer Research (EACR), Israel Society of Cancer Research (ISCR) and Committee for Cell and Gene-based Therapy of the Israeli Ministry of Health. Prof. Lotem received her MD from the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at the Tel Aviv University, Israel, and was a research fellow at the National Institute of Health (NIH), Maryland, USA.

Dr. Mario Sznol is a Professor of Internal Medicine, Leader of the Melanoma-Renal Cancer Disease-Associated Translational Research Team, and Co-Leader of the Cancer Immunology Program. Dr. Sznol is also the current President of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC). Dr. Sznol graduated from Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in Houston, Texas. He trained in internal medicine at BCM and completed a medical oncology fellowship in the Department of Neoplastic Diseases, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York. He spent the next twelve years in the Biologics Evaluation Section (BES), Investigational Drug Branch (IDB), and Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program of the National Cancer Institute. He was Head of the BES from 1994-1999. He attended on the inpatient units of the Biological Response Modifiers Program, NCI, from 1988-1996 and the Immunotherapy Service of the Surgery Branch, NCI, from 1997-1999. From 1999-2004, he served as Vice President of Clinical Development and Executive Officer of Vion Pharmaceuticals in New Haven, Connecticut. Dr. Sznol’s areas of interest include early drug development, immunotherapy, and treatments for advanced melanoma and renal cancer.

Prof. Ciechanover is currently a distinguished research professor in the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, and serves on the board of several biotech companies. His current research is focused on several biological aspects of cancer development and tumor suppression, involving the role of the ubiquitin proteasome system in these processes. His laboratory, which is part of the Rappaport Technion’s Integrated Cancer Center (RTICC) in the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, is currently involved in development of several anti-cancer drugs – including a unique PROTAC. It expands its areas of research and focus to include informatics, AI-based diagnoistic tools, and metabolomics, and in collaboration with Oncology Centers in Israel and China, initiating clinical trials that use application of precision medicine for the benefit of cancer patients.

Among the many accolades that Prof. Ciechanover has been awarded are the 2000 Albert Lasker Prize for Basic Medical Research, the 2003 Israel Prize for Biological Research, and the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He is a member of various academies, including the Israeli National Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) and Medicine (NAM) of the USA (Foreign Associate), and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS; Foreign Member).

Prof. Robert Kerbel is a distinguished scientist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, Canada. He is internationally recognized for his multiple contributions to cancer research, particularly in the fields of anti-angiogenic therapy and metronomic chemotherapy. For his achievements, Prof. Kerbel has been awarded the Canadian Cancer Society Robert Noble Award for Excellence in Cancer Research, the Breast Cancer Research Award from the European Institute of Oncology, a Man of Distinction Honor by the Israel Cancer Research Fund, and the Colin Thomson Memorial Medal from Worldwide Cancer Research. He was a recipient of a tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Tumor Biology, Angiogenesis and Antiangiogenic Therapy from 2001-2015. Prof. Kerbel is a member of numerous scientific advisory boards in both industry and academia as well as scientific peer review journal editorial boards. He also holds multiple sponsored research agreements with biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Prof. Kerbel received his PhD in immunology from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada in 1972, and completed postdoctoral training in tumor immunology at the Chester Beatty Research Institute in London, England.

Prof. Raanan Berger is a senior oncologist and radiotherapist, serving as Director of the Cancer Center at the Sheba Medical Center, Israel. In 2006, he established the Riva Koschitzky Oncology Clinical Research Unit at Sheba, the largest center for all-phase oncology clinical trials in Israel, currently conducting over 200 advanced clinical trials. In addition, he is a senior lecturer at the Sackler Medical School at the Tel Aviv University, and runs a basic and translational research lab studying molecular mechanisms in prostate and breast tumorigenesis. Prof. Berger is a member of the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) and American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), and co-author of over 70 peer reviewed scientific articles. He received his MD and PhD from the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at the Tel Aviv University, Israel, and was a post-doctoral fellow at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School.

David Gandara, Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of California, Davis. He is the co-director of the Center for Experimental Therapeutics and Senior Advisor to the Director at UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center. He was recently appointed Adjunct Clinical Professor of the Translational and Clinical Research Program at the University of Hawaii Cancer Center and Chief Medical Officer for the International Society of Liquid Biopsy (ISLB), a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the science and clinical application of liquid biopsy in cancer diagnosis and therapy. He is an internationally known clinician-scientist and lung cancer thought leader and has published over 450 peer-reviewed papers. He has led many notable research projects in lung cancer, including early therapeutics trials through an N01-sponsored award, cooperative group trials as past-chair of the SWOG Lung Committee, and multi-institutional translational science projects such as clinical director of the patient-derived xenograft (PDX) lung program in collaboration with The Jackson Laboratory Cancer Center. Dr. Gandara has been selected for many awards and honors, including the Lifetime Scientific Award from the International Association for Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), the Team Science Award from the Addario Lung Cancer Foundation, and the Trajectory Achievement Award from the ISLB. He is current principal investigator for a National Cancer Institute UG1 award to UCDCCC for cancer clinical trials, and co-leader of Lung-MAP, a unique NCI-sponsored public-private partnership for new drug development in lung cancer. He is the founding co-chair and current member of the NCI-directed Investigational Drug Steering Committee (IDSC). Dr. Gandara is the past Editor-in-Chief of the journal Clinical Lung Cancer. He served as president of the IASLC from 2009-2011 and treasurer from 2013-2017. He is a prior member of the board of directors and secretary-treasurer of ASCO. In 2017, Gandara received the Giants of Cancer Care Award in lung cancer.

Prof. Domany’s works in the faculty of Complex Systems Physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science. His expertise is in the field of statistical physics. His current research interests focus on the development of computational methods, with a special emphasis on applications to biologically motivated problems, in particular, analysis of high-throughput biological data. He works with several groups from the life sciences, in Israel and abroad, on analysis of human gene expression data obtained from DNA chips, with an emphasis on studies of cancer. Winner of the Lombroso Award in Cancer Research.