Professor Adrian Harris

Biography

Adrian L Harris is the Cancer Research UK Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Oxford and directs the Cancer Research UK Molecular Oncology Laboratories at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine (WIMM). He is a Consultant Medical Oncologist and a Professorial Fellow of St Hugh’s College Oxford. He is Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Cancer and on the Editorial Board of Cancer Cell. He is a Senior Investigator in the National Institute of Health Research and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

He is a ‘Highly Cited Researcher 2014’ ranking among the top 1% most cited for their subject field and year of publication—between 2002 and 2012 and included in Thompson Reuters ‘2014 World’s most Influential Scientific Minds.’ He is also listed in Boyack KW, et al. A list of highly influential biomedical researchers, 1996-2011. Eur J Clin Invest. 2013 43:1339-65. These are Top 400 world-wide cited investigators in all biomedical fields. He has published over 500 papers and there are over 145,000 citations to them, h-index 184.

He has received a Platinum Merit Award from then National Health Service for the last 15 years, given to the 200 most outstanding consultants for all specialities.

He trained in Medicine and Biochemistry at Liverpool University, did a DPhil at Oxford University then trained at the Royal Marsden Hospital in Medical Oncology. He was appointed Professor of Clinical Oncology at Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1982. Since 1988 he has been the Professor of Medical Oncology at Oxford University. He directs the Molecular Oncology Laboratories at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine. He has managed breast cancer patients for over 30 years.

His major laboratory interests involve the role of hypoxia in breast tumour biology, and tumour angiogenesis, the metabolic response to hypoxia, microRNAs induced by hypoxia and hypoxia-induced cell death. He has conducted many predictive and prognostic studies and early exploratory phase trials in new drug development, molecular pathology and biomarkers, to translate laboratory findings to clinical relevance and development of new agents.

In the Department of Oncology over 20 Phase I and II trials are run and current trials include new drugs blocking angiogenesis, metabolism inhibitors, DNA repair, immunotherapy, inhibitors of signal transduction and their interactions with radiotherapy. Specific emphasis is on classification of tumours by functional imaging, molecular profiles, and pharmacodynamic endpoints to targeted therapies.

Assistant Professor Lorenzo Galluzzi

Bibliography

Lorenzo Galluzzi (born 1980) is currently Assistant Professor of Cell Biology in Radiation Oncology with the Department of Radiation Oncology of the Weill Cornell Medical College (New York, NY, USA), Honorary Assistant Professor Adjunct with the Department of Dermatology of the Yale School of Medicine (New Haven, CT, USA), Honorary Associate Professor with the Faculty of Medicine of the Paris Descartes University (Paris, France), and Faculty Member with the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and Biotechnology of the University of Ferrara (Ferrara, Italy) and the Graduate School of Pharmacological Sciences of the University of Padova (Padova, Italy).

Prior to joining Weill Cornell Medical College (2017), Lorenzo Galluzzi was a Junior Scientist of the Research Team “Apoptosis, Cancer and Immunity” at the Cordeliers Research Center (Paris, France; 2012-2016). Lorenzo Galluzzi did his post-doctoral training at the Gustave Roussy Cancer Center (Villejuif, France; 2009-2011), after receiving his PhD from the Paris Sud University (Le Kremlin-Bicetre, France; 2005-2008). He is also Associate Director of the European Academy for Tumor Immunology (EATI), Co-chair of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Immunogenic Cell Death Working Group, and Founding Member of the European Research Institute for Integrated Cellular Pathology (ERI-ICP).

Lorenzo Galluzzi is best known for major experimental and conceptual contributions to the fields of cell death, autophagy, tumor metabolism and tumor immunology. In particular, he provided profound insights into the links between adaptive stress responses in cancer cells and the activation of a clinically relevant tumor-targeting immune response in the context of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Lorenzo Galluzzi has published more than 400 scientific articles in international peer-reviewed journals. According to a survey published by Lab Times, he is currently the 6th and the youngest of the 30 most-cited European cell biologists (relative to the period 2007–2013), and he was nominated Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics (formerly, Thomson Reuter) in 2016 and 2018. Lorenzo Galluzzi currently operates as Editor-in-Chief of three journals: OncoImmunology (which he co-founded in 2011), International Review of Cell and Molecular Biology, and Molecular and Cellular Oncology (which he co-founded in 2013). In addition, Lorenzo Galluzzi currently serves as Founding Editor for Microbial Cell and Cell Stress, and Associate Editor for Cell Death and Disease.

Associate Professor Gerry Hanna

Bibliography

Associate Professor Gerry Hanna is the Director of Radiation Oncology at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne and holds an honorary appointment with the University of Melbourne. A/Prof Hanna’s research interests are the use of PET/CT in radiotherapy planning for lung cancer, mechanisms of radiotherapy resistance, technical radiotherapy, stereotactic ablative radiotherapy and systemic therapy and immunotherapy combinations with radiotherapy. He is chief investigator of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s “PERTAIN” study and previous co-chief Investigator of the CONCORDE study, a UK study of novel agents in combination with radiotherapy in the treatment of lung cancer. He is the Thoracic Sub-Study lead for the SARON study and a TMG member for the UK’s HALT and CONFIRM studies.

Ingo Ringshausen

Bibliography

Ingo Ringshausen studied medicine at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz/ Germany and London/ Canada. After his graduation in 1999 he started his medical training in Internal Medicine and Haematology/ Oncology at the Technical University in Munich. Between 2003 and 2006 he joined the group of Gerard Evan at UCSF on a postdoctoral fellowship. After his board certification in 2010 he became a Consultant in the Department of Haematology/ Oncology in Munich and subsequently an independent group leader. In 2014 he joined the Department of Haematology in Cambridge and is now appointed as Consultant Haematologist at Addenbrooke’s hospital and a Principal Investigator at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute.

Seth Coffelt

Biography

Seth Coffelt is a Senior Research Fellow within the Institute of Cancer Sciences at the University of Glasgow. His lab is based at the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute. Seth obtained his Ph.D. from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, in 2006. He undertook his first postdoc position at the University of Sheffield in the UK where he studied the role of macrophages in tumor progression. Afterwards, Seth was awarded a Marie Curie Intra-European Career Development Fellowship to join Karin de Visser’s lab at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam. During this time, Seth discovered how certain immune cells cooperate with each other to promote metastasis through the suppression of other immune cells. Seth moved to Scotland in the summer of 2016 to focus on the molecular mechanisms that regulate gd T cell function during the evolution of metastasis and cancer progression. Recently, Seth was awarded the British Association for Cancer Research AstraZeneca Young Scientist Frank Rose Award for 2018.

Brid Ryan

Bibliography

Dr Ryan is a Principal Investigator at the National Cancer Institute. She came to the US in 2007 under a US-Ireland jointly funded program as a Cancer Prevention Fellow. She received all of her formal training in Ireland: from University College Cork (BSc Biochemistry), and University College Dublin (PhD Biochemistry, followed by Masters of Public Health). Dr Ryan is head of the Integrative Molecular Epidemiology Unit (IMEU) of the Laboratory of Human Carcinogenesis, CCR, NCI, and uses an integrative and translational approach to studying population differences in lung cancer, combining epidemiological and laboratory methods to her research. In particular, her research program aims to develop diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for lung cancer, and uses a precision medicine approach to understand cancer health disparities. She is the author of over 50 research papers and book chapters and has received numerous awards for her work, including the European Association for Cancer Research Young Scientist Award and the AACR Future Leader in Cancer Prevention Award.

Jonathan Coulter

Bibliography

Dr Coulter is a Senior Lecturer, working within the Nanomedicine and Biotherapeutics research group at the School of Pharmacy, Queen’s University Belfast. His research has always had a focus on developing strategies to overcome treatment resistance in cancer, with a specific focus on radiotherapy. His work has spanned approaches that include the use of suicide gene therapy and more recently exploiting the unique physical properties of high atomic number nanoparticles as radiosensitisers. Recent iterations have been developed as biologically active formulations, designed to overcome tumour microenvironment properties which are known to confer treatment resistance, in addition to the core particle acting as a radiation dose modifier. This presentation aims to outline some of the successes we have experienced in this space while looking to spark discussion around the key challenges that have limited clinical translation to date.

Amanda Cross

Title: Reader in Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention, School of Public Health and the Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College London

Bibliography

Dr. Cross is a cancer epidemiologist with a joint appointment in the School of Public Health and in the Department of Surgery and Cancer within the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London. She is Head of the Cancer Screening and Prevention Research Group (http://csprg.org.uk). She completed her PhD at Cambridge University and then spent 11 years in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH), United States. As a tenure-track investigator at NCI, she was also a mentor for the Yale University– NCI Partnership Training Program and held the position of Assistant Professor Adjunct within the Division of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at Yale University. Her research interests are focused on aetiologic studies of diet and lifestyle factors in relation to cancer risk and survival, as well as colorectal cancer prevention and early detection by screening and surveillance. Her projects include analyses of large international cohort studies as well as the conduct of randomised controlled trials.

Professor Paul Browne

Bibliography

Paul Browne is currently Director of the Trinity St. James’s Cancer Institute. He is a Professor of Haematology at Trinity College Dublin, and Consultant Haematologist and Director of the National Adult Stem Cell Transplant Programme at St. James's Hospital Dublin. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin in 1986, he trained first in Ireland, and then as a Fellow and Faculty member at the University of Minnesota, USA. Since returning to Ireland in 1997, he has led the development of therapeutic programmes for leukaemia and myeloma, with a special interest in stem cell transplant and novel therapeutics. He has collaborated on laboratory studies of myeloma biology, including a focus on genetic susceptibility in DNA repair pathways, in work funded by the HRB and the Irish Cancer Society. He was Chair of the Irish Cooperative Oncology Research Group (ICORG, now Cancer Trials Ireland) from 2008 to 2012, leading the successful international peer-reviewed HRB multi-million euro grant renewal to support clinical and translational research in cancer. More recently, he has led the TCD work packages of two major projects in conjunction with colleagues in Cork and Galway, one on Cellular Therapy and cord blood cells, funded by the National Blood Centre, and the other a joint Irish Cancer Society/Science Foundation Ireland five-year programme establishing the infrastructure and clinical research activities for the Blood Cancer Network Ireland (BCNI).

Janessa Laskin

Bibliography

Dr Laskin is a clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of British Columbia and an active member of the medical oncology staff at BC Cancer Agency in Vancouver, Canada. Her clinical and research interests have primarily focused on lung and head and neck cancers. She is an active member of many national and international lung cancer trials and advisory groups. In the last 7 years her research has evolved towards cancer genomics and personalized medicine and she is the clinical program leader for the Personalized Oncogenomics (POG) Program which is a collaborative research project between medical oncologists and the Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre in Vancouver. The POG program is truly translational research effort that uses in-depth genomic and transcriptomic sequencing to guide chemotherapy decision-making in a clinically relevant time-frame.

Johanna Joyce

Bibliography

Prof. Johanna Joyce’s laboratory investigates the microenvironment in which a tumour arises and the critical influence that non-cancerous immune and stromal cells can have on tumour progression and metastasis. They have uncovered regulatory signals provided by the normal tissue stroma and immune cells to the cancer cells, and determined how normal cells can be modified by the cancer cells to produce a variety of factors that enhance tumour malignancy. Her group is also actively exploring the mechanisms underlying the contribution of the tumour microenvironment to therapeutic resistance. Their ultimate goal is to apply this collective knowledge to the clinic and develop targeted therapies that disrupt critical tumour-stromal interactions.

Johanna began her independent career at MSKCC in New York in 2004, rising through the academic ranks to Full Member and Full Professor at Cornell Medical School in 2014. Johanna moved to Switzerland in 2016, where she is a Full Professor at the University of Lausanne and Full Member of the Ludwig Institute of Cancer Research. In 2017, Johanna was elected as a Member of EMBO and a Fellow of the European Academy of Cancer Sciences. Johanna has been recognized for her contributions to cancer research through a series of awards including the Cloetta Prize, Swiss Bridge Award, American Cancer Society Scholar Award, Rita Allen Foundation Award, Sidney Kimmel Foundation Award, and the inaugural Pandolfi Women in Cancer Research Award from Harvard Medical School, among many others.

www.joycelab.org

Daniel Renouf, MD, MPH, FRCPC

Bibliography

Daniel Renouf is a medical oncologist at BC Cancer, Vancouver Centre, and an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia, Department of Medicine.

He received his Doctor of Medicine from the University of Alberta and completed his internal medicine and medical oncology training at the University of British Columbia and BC Cancer. He undertook further training in early drug development and gastrointestinal oncology at Princess Margaret Hospital and the University of Toronto, and obtained a Masters of Public Health from Harvard University.

Daniel’s research interests include developmental therapeutics, genomics, and biomarker development within gastrointestinal cancers, with a focus on pancreatic cancer. He is the leader of the BC Cancer Phase I program, the BC Cancer GI Tumour Group chair, the Co-Director of Pancreas Centre BC and is the Co-chair of the Canadian Cancer Trials Group Pancreatic Cancer disease group.

Jerome Coffey

Bibliography

Dr Jerome Coffey is the Director of the National Cancer Control Programme (NCCP).

A graduate of TCD he completed internal medicine and radiation oncology training in Ireland. Following higher training in major academic oncology centres in Canada and the UK he was appointed as a Consultant Radiation Oncologist to the staff of the St Luke’s Radiation Oncology Network and the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital in 2006. Before taking up his current role he was Clinical Director of the St Luke’s Radiation Oncology Network, Chairman of the Radiation Oncology Committee in the Faculty of Radiologists (RCSI) and Radiation Oncology Advisor to the NCCP.

Dr Coffey was appointed Chairperson of the Board of the National Cancer Registry in May 2017.