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Professor Chris Whitty is Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England, the UK government’s Chief Medical Adviser and head of the public health profession. Chris is a practising NHS Consultant Physician at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, and a visiting professor at Gresham College. Chris is an epidemiologist and has undertaken research and worked as a doctor in the UK, Africa and Asia. He was Professor of Public and International Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) before becoming CMO and remains an honorary professor. Chris was the Chief Scientific Adviser for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) from January 2016 to August 2021, with overall responsibility for the department’s research and development, including being head of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), the government’s major funder of clinical, public health, social care and translational research. Chris was the interim Government Chief Scientific Adviser from 2017 to 2018, including during the Novichok poisonings. Before that, he was the Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for International Development (DFID), which included leading technical work on the West Africa Ebola outbreak and other international emergencies.
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David Crosby is head of prevention and early detection research at Cancer Research UK (CRUK), a fundraising research charity and the world’s second largest non-commercial funder of cancer research, after the US government. David began life as a baby, before becoming a pharmacologist, completing a PhD studying cell signalling in platelets. He spent time in academia, lecturing in clinical pharmacology. He moved into industry, identifying and evaluating new clinical development opportunities for Linde Gas Therapeutics, the world’s largest medical gases company. He then moved into the public sector, joining the UK government research funding agency, the Medical Research Council, where he oversaw various science areas and research funding programmes (including inflammation, cardiovascular and respiratory research), most recently leading the MRC-NIHR methodology research programme, and MRC’s strategy and investments in experimental medicine. He is now developing and implementing a new strategy and programme of research investments at CRUK which aims to accelerate progress towards earlier detection and prevention of cancer, through an integrated multidisciplinary approach, driven by improvements in health outcomes.
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Dr. Carmen Guerra is the Ruth C. and Raymond G. Perelman Professor of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Guerra is a general internist and cancer equity researcher. She is also the Vice Chair of Diversity and Inclusion for the Department of Medicine and the Associate Director of Diversity and Outreach for the Abramson Cancer Center.
Dr. Guerra’s research has focused on developing and evaluating interventions to increase the participation of underrepresented populations in cancer screenings and cancer clinical trials. She developed and evaluated several cancer screening patient navigation programs and programs to increase participation of Black patients in cancer clinical trials including a Cancer Clinical Trials Ambassador Program and a financial reimbursement program for out-of-pocket costs for patients participating in cancer treatment trials.
Dr. Guerra serves as the U.S. Deputy Chair for the health equity workgroup of the Multicancer Early Detection Consortium. Dr. Guerra co-chaired the American Society of Clinical Oncology-Association of Community Cancer Centers workgroups that developed an unconscious bias training specifically for cancer research teams, “Just Ask”; an equity, diversity and inclusion site self-assessment for cancer research teams to identify best practices; and the ASCO-ACCC joint research statement “Increasing Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Cancer Clinical Trials.” She also is member of the American Cancer Society (ACS) National Board of Directors and a member of the ACS Clinical Guidelines Development group. Dr. Guerra is an author of the ACS colorectal, cervical and HPV clinical practice guidelines which widely influence clinical practice.
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Claude Chelala is Prof of Bioinformatics at Barts Cancer Institute. She is co-Lead for the Barts Life Sciences Precision Medicine programme aiming to unlock the longitudinal Electronic Health Record phenotype from multi-dimensional data. She leads the Health Informatics and Bioinformatics for two national biobanks (BCNTB and PCRFTB) creating an ecosystem with interlinking clinical, in vivo, in vitro and in silico resources to provide the analytical means to harness clinical data and molecular findings. Her research in breast cancer focuses on using multimodal data to explore ancestry-associated differences as well as the clinical utility of field cancerisation and imaging free-text reports in predicting cancer recurrence. Her research in pancreatic cancer uses sequential, non-invasive liquid biopsies for tracking tumour dynamics.
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Dr. Ghobrial completed her M.D. at Cairo University and a residency in Internal Medicine at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, then trained as a Hematology/Oncology Fellow at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. She is currently a Professor of Medicine and the Lavine Family Chair for Preventative Cancer Therapies at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School. She is the Director of Translational Research in the Department of Multiple Myeloma, Director of the Center for Prevention of Progression diseases (CPOP), and co-leader of the Lymphoma and Myeloma Program at Dana-Farber. She is the co-leader of the Stand Up to Cancer Myeloma Dream Team—the first Dream Team award for blood cancer, the recipient of the Claire W. and Richard P. Morse Research Award, the Jan Gosta Waldenstrom Award, and the William Dameshek Prize given annually by The American Society of Hematology (ASH) to an individual, younger than 50 who has made outstanding contributions in hematology.
Her research focuses on identifying and developing effective therapeutic interventions for precursor conditions of myeloma (Monoclonal Gammopathy of Undetermined Significance and Smoldering Multiple Myeloma, MGUS and SMM). The focus of her research is to identify novel biomarkers of disease progression and develop potentially curative therapies in the pre-malignant phase that exploit the immune microenvironment in the bone marrow. She developed a large, patient-empowering observational study for these precursor conditions, the PCROWD study. She is also the PI of the first screening study for multiple myeloma in the US, the PROMISE study, which is currently screening 30,000 high-risk individuals, including those of African descent or with a family history of blood cancer.
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Jon Emery is the Herman Professor of Primary Care Cancer Research at the University of Melbourne, and the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre Primary Care Research and Education Lead. He is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Leadership Fellow, and Director of the Cancer Australia Primary Care Collaborative Cancer Clinical Trials Group (PC4).
Following his medical training at Cambridge and Oxford, he has followed a career in academic primary care, initially at Oxford, where he obtained his DPhil on cancer risk assessment tools, then as a Cancer Research UK Clinician Scientist at Cambridge before taking up a Chair at the University of Western Australia. He was the Australian leader on the Cancer Research UK international CanTest programme on early cancer diagnosis.
His research has focused on the application of advances in genetic medicine, primary care oncology and the development and evaluation of complex interventions including computer decision support systems, and new cancer diagnostic and screening technologies. He is currently leading several trials related to risk-based cancer screening in primary care.
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Kate Brain is a Professor of Health Psychology in Cardiff University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on behavioural aspects of cancer screening, prevention and early diagnosis, with a particular emphasis on addressing socioeconomic inequality. Since 2015 Kate has led a programme of behavioural science research spanning the Wales Cancer Research Centre and Primary and Emergency Care Research Centre, funded by Health and Care Research Wales. Kate is Associate Director of Population Health in Cardiff University’s College of Biomedical and Life Sciences. She is a member of Cancer Research UK’s Early Detection and Diagnosis Research Committee and advises NHS England on the Targeted Lung Health Check programme. In 2022 Kate joined the Multi-Cancer Early Detection Consortium as UK Deputy Chair of the Health Equity work group.
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Larry Kessler, Sc.D. is Professor in the Department of Health Systems and Population Health, University of Washington School of Public Health. He has over 40 years of experience in health services research. He came to the University of Washington from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration where he served as the director of both the Office of Surveillance and Biometrics and Office of Science and Engineering Laboratories at FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. Prior to that, his work in cancer surveillance with the Applied Research Branch at NCI substantially changed how cancer surveillance is performed, with the addition of the Cancer supplements to the National Health Interview Survey, the SEER-Medicare data system, and the Breast Cancer Screening and Surveillance Consortiums. He also spent 6 years at the National Institute of Mental Health primarily doing research on the diagnosis and prevalence of mental disorders in primary care. He has an extensive research record in applied health services research with work in cancer, in cancer surveillance research, and regulatory knowledge of medical products, including over 200 peer-reviewed journal publications. His recent research has broadened this into related fields of comparative effectiveness, patient centered and outcomes research. His recent work has focused on use of technologies in medical care. He is currently involved with several randomized trials and observational studies of comparative effectiveness and patient-centered outcomes research. He also has particular research and expertise in diagnostic technologies. He now serves as Deputy Chair of the Multi-Cancer Early Detection Consortium.
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Dr Thompson is a Family Physician and clinical researcher whose career over the past 3 decades has spanned the UK and the USA. In the UK he worked as a GP and academic researcher at the University of Oxford where his research was focused on improving diagnostic precision across a number of health care conditions in primary care, including children and adults with serious infections. His research emphasis on diagnostics continued over the last 10 years at the University of Washington (UW), and has expanded to examine use of new diagnostic tests and technologies in ambulatory care settings or by patients themselves, and closing gaps between technology developers and the primary care clinical and research communities. Recent research at the UW has used AI to extract symptom signatures of cancer from routine electronic health record data to identify individuals with possible cancer. He joined Google in 2022 where his research spans a number of technologies including smartphone and wearable sensors and AI, across a range of health conditions globally.
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Sam is the Director of Medicine at University College London, a division within the Faculty of Medical Sciences that encompasses 8 departments, over 20 centres and around 100 principal investigators across three campuses. His laboratory research, funded by Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK programme grants focusses on the airways and examines both normal homeostasis and the earliest development of cancer. Major contributions include defining that normal airway homeostasis is governed by stochastic division of basal cell; showing that airways genetically damaged by smoking can resolve on quitting; mapping the molecular architecture of pre-cancerous Squamous cell lesions, and identifying the immunological abnormalities that allow precancerous lesions to progress to cancer. These achievements were recognised with his election to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2021. He is the chief investigator of several trials ranging first-in-man trials of cell and gene therapies emanating from his own lab, to SUMMIT, the largest lung cancer screening trial in Europe recruiting over 13000 people. He works across the University, UCL Hospitals, the UCLH Biomedical Research Centre and interacts closely with industry, again ranging from trial delivery through to venture capital funded drug discovery programmes.
He works as a respiratory consultant at UCLH with a particular interest in lung cancer, mesothelioma, interventional and diagnostic bronchoscopy and early lung cancer detection. He has been Head of UCL Respiratory, Vice-Chair of the National ‘Clinical Expert Group’ on Lung Cancer and the Faculty of Medical Science Vice-Dean of Research at UCL.
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Dr. Sapna Syngal, MD, MPH is the Leader of the Cancer Risk, Prevention, and Early Detection Program in the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, Director of Strategic Planning for Prevention and Early Cancer Detection at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Director of Research in the Division of Cancer Genetics and Prevention at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She has established an internationally recognized clinical, research, and educational program devoted to the genetics, early detection and prevention of cancer.
Dr. Syngal’s research interests began in the field of inherited gastrointestinal cancers, including Lynch syndrome and inherited pancreatic cancer, where her lab has made seminal contributions to identifying new methods of identifying individuals and families at high risk of cancer and screening for cancers at their earliest stages using novel technologies and biomarkers. A related focus of her work has been to increase access to genetic testing, with a focus on increasing testing and cancer screening among disadvantaged populations. She is the developer of the PREMM models, which are widely used for risk assessment for inherited cancer, the founder of the Lynch Syndrome Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Principal Investigator of the GENERATE study, funded as part of a Stand Up 2 Cancer and Lustgarten Foundation Pancreatic Cancer Interception Dream Team project.
Dr. Syngal has served as part of numerous national and international committees including the US Multi-Society Task Force on Colorectal Cancer, an American Society of Clinical Oncology group that developed the Policy Statement Update on Genetic and Genomic Testing for Cancer Susceptibility, and led the development and publication of the American College of Gastroenterology Clinical Guideline for Genetic Testing and Management of Hereditary Gastrointestinal Cancer Syndromes. She was elected to be a member of the Association of American Physicians in 2018 and the American Society of Clinical Investigation in 2009. She was the recipient of the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Collaborative Group of Americas on Hereditary Colorectal Cancer. As a culmination of her career, Dr. Syngal is now leading efforts across Dana-Farber and the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center to implement a paradigm shift in cancer care, with a focus on taking care of patients with premalignant conditions with interventions that lead to cancer interception.
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Yoryos Lyratzopoulos is the foundation professor of cancer epidemiology at University College London, where he leads the ECHO (Epidemiology of Cancer Healthcare & Outcomes) Group. His research aims to contribute to global efforts to control cancer through improved understanding of: a) The risk of underlying cancer in patients who present with new onset symptoms (particularly non-specific symptoms) in primary care; b) Potentially avoidable delays in the diagnosis of symptomatic patients with underlying cancer, and related responsible mechanisms; c) Disparities in cancer diagnosis/detection and treatment, and their origins above/beyond tumour factors; d) Organisational and international variation in diagnostic routes and treatment pathways. To April 2023, he has published 226 research papers, >55% of which as first or last author. Having been awarded the Cancer Research UK Future Leaders Prize (2016), he has represented his cancer epidemiology in the development of NICE’s Suspecting Cancer in Primary Care guidelines (2012-2015), a milestone in early diagnosis policymaking. His research has received citations in key international and national policy documents, including: WHO’s “Report on cancer” (2020); WHO’s Report on the Global Burden of Diagnostic Errors in Primary Care (2016); CRUK’s “Early Detection and Diagnosis Roadmap” (2020); CRUK’s “Cancer in the UK: Socio-economic Deprivation” (2020); The State of the Nation Report on Cancer in the UK (2018); The Lancet Oncology Commission "The Expanding Role of Primary Care in Cancer Control" (2015); The US Institute of Medicine Report Improving Diagnosis in Health Care (2015); and The UK Government’s “Cancer Strategy for England” (2015).
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By combining mathematical modeling, statistical analysis, and machine learning, with experimental, epidemiological, and DNA sequencing data, Dr. Tomasetti has provided the first quantitative evidence for the large role in cancer causation played by the normal, i.e. endogenous, accumulation of somatic mutations in the cells of the human body.
As an applied mathematician, he currently leads the effort to develop classification algorithms for the early detection of cancer via a simple blood test.
His work is recognized internationally for his paradigm-shift contributions to the current understanding of cancer etiology and tumor evolution. He has published more than 40 papers, with several leading and corresponding author papers in Science, Nature, and the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Altmetric, a data science service that tracks where published research is mentioned online ranked three of his papers — all published in the journal Science — #4, #15, and #22 for the attention they received among any research paper published in any scientific field for the years 2015, 2017, and 2018, respectively.
Dr. Tomasetti holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Maryland, College Park (Dec. 2010).
Before joining City of Hope and TGen, he was an Associate Professor of Oncology and Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University with appointments in the Division of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, in both the Department of Oncology (Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center) and the Department of Biostatistics (Bloomberg School of Public Health).
After his Ph.D., he was a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biostatistics of the Harvard School of Public Health and in the Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (Jan. 2011 – Jun. 2013), after which he became a faculty member at Hopkins.
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Clare’s research team focuses on statistical, population and public-health-related analyses to best leverage cancer susceptibility genetics for risk stratification, cancer early diagnosis and prevention.
She is currently leading three multi-centre CRUK-funded research programs focused on cancer susceptibility gene testing pathways (BRCA-DIRECT), variant interpretation (CanGene-CanVar) and functional inference from high throughput assays (CG-MAVE). Working with the NHSE Cancer Program she is leading two implementation programs using high-throughput pathways to scale genetic testing in the NHS, including an SBRI-funded initiative for using digital platforms for BRCA-testing in women diagnosed with breast cancer. She has led genome-wide association studies in breast and testicular cancer, as well as evaluations of polygenic risk prediction in these and other cancers. She is also an honorary consultant in Public Health Medicine with NHS Digital/NHSE, working together on amalgamation of genomic data from across the national NHS Genomic Laboratory hubs.
From 2014 to 2020, Clare worked as Clinical Lead for Cancer Genomics for the Genomics England 100,000 Genomes Project. Having trained as a Clinical Geneticist, her clinical work at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust focuses on management of patients and families with genetic susceptibility to cancer.
Clare undertook her preclinical training in Cambridge and qualified in medicine from Oxford University. She completed a Masters degree in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and a PhD in Genetic Epidemiology at the Institute of Cancer Research, London.
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Edward Patz, Jr., M.D. is the James and Alice Chen Distinguished Professor of Radiology and Professor in Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke University. He is a clinician–scientist, with over 200 publications, and has participated in numerous clinical trials including the National Lung Cancer Screening Trial. He is the principal investigator of a basic science laboratory that explores clonal evolution of tumors, biomarkers for early detection, and the role of inflammation in cancer. He is the 2022 recipient of the IASLC lifetime achievement Joseph W. Cullen Prevention/Early Detection Award.
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Professor Gilbert, University of Cambridge is an honorary consultant radiologist working in the Cambridge Breast Unit. Her research is focused on technological assessment of new imaging techniques relating to breast cancer and screening. Previously she evaluated digital breast tomosynthesis and computer aided detection in the breast screening programme and is currently assessing impact of AI. She undertakes research in risk adapted stratified breast screening using Abbreviated MRI, Tomosynthesis, Whole Breast Ultrasound and Contrast Enhanced Mammography. She is working in multimodal functional imaging with MRI and PET to explore the tumour environment using breast cancer as a model and correlating this with the tumour genetic profile.
Since 2012 Professor Gilbert has been awarded fifteen competitive grants worth over £20M. She was a member of grant funding panels - NIHR HTA Board, the EME Board and is on a number of advisory panels. She was a previous associate editor of Clinical Radiology.
Professor Gilbert has over 260 peer reviewed publications, 5 book chapters and numerous conference abstracts. She is a regular speaker at international Radiology conferences in Chicago and Vienna and was awarded Honorary membership of Radiological Society of North America in 2019, Honorary fellowship of the American College of Radiologists, the Gold Medal from the European Society of Radiology and fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2021 and fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences. She is immediate past President of the European Society of Breast Imaging.
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Garth Funston is a GP and Clinical Senior Lecturer in Primary Care Cancer Research at the Wolfson Institute of Population Health. His research focuses on diagnostic test evaluation and the development and validation of prediction models using large healthcare datasets, with the aim of improving cancer detection in primary care and optimising diagnostic pathways.
Following Medical training at St Andrews and Cambridge, Garth undertook clinical academic training in Manchester. He completed a Cancer Research UK funded PhD at the University of Cambridge, which focussed on the detection of ovarian cancer in primary care. He was lead author on the Royal College of General Practitioners Paper of the Year for Clinical Research (2021) and was awarded the World Ovarian Cancer Coalition Transformational Research Prize for his work on ovarian cancer detection.
Garth currently leads a portfolio of charity and government funded studies evaluating diagnostic tests and prediction models for a range of cancers including ovarian, prostate and gastro-intestinal cancer.
Since 2012 Professor Gilbert has been awarded fifteen competitive grants worth over £20M. She was a member of grant funding panels - NIHR HTA Board, the EME Board and is on a number of advisory panels. She was a previous associate editor of Clinical Radiology.
Professor Gilbert has over 260 peer reviewed publications, 5 book chapters and numerous conference abstracts. She is a regular speaker at international Radiology conferences in Chicago and Vienna and was awarded Honorary membership of Radiological Society of North America in 2019, Honorary fellowship of the American College of Radiologists, the Gold Medal from the European Society of Radiology and fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2021 and fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences. She is immediate past President of the European Society of Breast Imaging.
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Laura D. Wood, MD, PhD is an Associate Professor and Director of the Division of Gastrointestinal and Liver Pathology in the Department of Pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She is also Co-Leader of the Cancer Invasion and Metastasis Program in the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and Deputy Director of the Sol Goldman Pancreatic Cancer Research Center. Dr. Wood received her BS in Biology from the College of William & Mary, graduating Summa Cum Laude with membership in Phi Beta Kappa. She then went on to earn both her MD and PhD from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, with membership in Alpha Omega Alpha. She completed her PhD research in the laboratory of Dr. Bert Vogelstein, where she led the first whole exome sequencing studies in human cancers. Dr. Wood then went on to complete residency in Anatomic Pathology (serving as Chief Resident in her final year) and fellowship in Gastrointestinal and Liver Pathology at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Now, she leads her own translational research laboratory focused on molecular characterization of pancreatic neoplasms. Her laboratory leverages next generation sequencing to characterize genetic heterogeneity and clonal evolution in precancerous pancreatic lesions. In addition, her group employs three-dimensional organoid culture models to interrogate the molecular drivers of pancreatic cancer invasion, and they are developing tools to transform human pancreatic pathology from two to three dimensions. In addition to her research program, Dr. Wood signs out clinical specimens on the Gastrointestinal Pathology service.
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Lisa Lacasse is president of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN), the nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy affiliate of the American Cancer Society (ACS). She leads ACS CAN’s nationwide public policy advocacy agenda and oversees a team in Washington, D.C., that empowers volunteers across the country to influence evidence-based policy change that impacts the cancer burden. Ms. Lacasse is responsible for leveraging the organization’s unique power as the largest cancer patient advocacy organization, with a presence in all 50 states, to achieve widespread impact for every person touched by cancer in every community, driving organizational strategy and overseeing all campaigns and operations.
Ms. Lacasse also serves on the board for the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids. Before joining ACS CAN, she was the chief financial officer at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Research Center. Ms. Lacasse spent several years in senior management at the University of Maryland Medical System and began her career in the office of the Governor of the State of Maine. She received a Master of Business Administration degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Vermont. Ms. Lacasse shares her thoughts on patient advocacy, public policy, and ACS CAN’s role in the fight against cancer on Twitter at @LLacasseACSCAN and on LinkedIn.
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Dr. Manali Patel is an Associate Professor at Stanford University in the Division of Oncology and a Staff Thoracic Oncologist at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System. She is a health services researcher and directs research programs at both Stanford and the VA that focuses on improving equitable delivery of cancer care. She uses principles of community-based participatory research in her work and is the principal investigator of multiple externally funded awards, such as the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine, the Patient Centered outcomes Research Institute, and the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Patel serves on several national committees focused on improving cancer care delivery and value-based care. She is the past chair of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Health Equity Committee, the ASCO Serving the Underserved Taskforce, and serves on the ASCO Government Relations Committee. She earned her medical degree and Masters in Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, followed by Internal Medicine Residency, Hematology and Oncology Fellowship and several research fellowships, in addition to obtaining a Masters in Health Services Research at Stanford.
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Patrick M. Bossuyt is the professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the Amsterdam University Medical Centers, where he leads the Biomarker and Test Evaluation research program. The BiTE program aims to appraise and develop methods for evaluating medical tests and biomarkers, with an emphasis on clinical performance, and to apply these methods in relevant clinical studies. In doing so, the program wants to strengthen the evidence base for rational decision-making about the use of tests and testing strategies in health care. Dr Bossuyt spearheaded the STARD initiative for the improved reporting of diagnostic test accuracy studies.
Dr Bossuyt has authored and co-authored several hundred publications in peer reviewed journals and serves on the editorial board of a number of these, including Radiology and Clinical Chemistry. He acted as chair of the Department of Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics at his university, chaired the Division of Public Health, and was Dean of Graduate Studies. For 10 years, dr Bossuyt also chaired the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Dutch Health Insurance Board, which oversees the health care benefits covered in the national health insurance program.
Dr. Patel serves on several national committees focused on improving cancer care delivery and value-based care. She is the past chair of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Health Equity Committee, the ASCO Serving the Underserved Taskforce, and serves on the ASCO Government Relations Committee. She earned her medical degree and Masters in Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, followed by Internal Medicine Residency, Hematology and Oncology Fellowship and several research fellowships, in addition to obtaining a Masters in Health Services Research at Stanford.
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Paul Brennan is Reader, Honorary Consultant Neurosurgeon and Clinical Director of Neurosurgery at the University of Edinburgh and NHS Lothian. Paul's research spans the laboratory and the clinic, combining molecular, epidemiology and clinical investigation. He applies this strategy to improving diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes for people with brain tumours. He is part of the CRUK Adult Brain Tumour Centre of Excellence, and the Tessa Jowell Brain Tumour Centre of Excellence.
The experience of many patients with a new brain tumour diagnosis is of weeks or months of diagnostic delay. Paul’s research has described the pathways of adult brain tumour diagnosis in the UK, and used big data approaches to examine whether identifying symptom combinations can improve diagnostic accuracy in primary care. His team has demonstrated that the verbal fluency (animal naming) test can enhance sensitivity of symptom-based diagnostic strategies. Clinical diagnostic strategies nevertheless fall short in terms of diagnostic efficiency and Paul has led a suite of clinical studies investigating application of a novel blood biomarker test in triage of symptomatic patients to prioritise them for gold-standard investigations, accelerating cancer diagnosis.
Collaborating over many years with Professor Matt Baker who developed the infrared spectroscopy-based serum biomarker test, (DxCover), Paul now leads a UK/European device registration study of test performance in brain cancer, ahead of its adoption into routine care. The platform spectroscopy technology has also been applied to diagnosis of other cancer types, and clinical efficacy assessed by Paul and his research team in the Edinburgh INFERENCE study.
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Prof Eeles is a Clinician Scientist at The Institute of Cancer Research and Honorary Consultant at The Royal Marsden NHS Trust. She is an internationally recognized expert in genetic predisposition to prostate cancer for which she was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in June 2012. Her research programme links bench to bedside and involves identification of genetic variants which predispose to prostate cancer and their clinical application to targeted screening and prostate cancer care. She is the Genomics Champion for the Royal College of Radiologists (Clinical Oncology Faculty). She leads a research programme in the genetics of Prostate Cancer, spanning from identification of genetic predisposition to studies in applications to screening and treatment.
She jointly leads the Early Detection and Diagnosis virtual centre at The Royal Marsden Hospital and The Institute of Cancer Research.
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Dr. Brunak is a professor and Research Director at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research at the University of Copenhagen. He is a leading expert in bioinformatics, disease systems biology, and medical informatics through invention and introduction of new computational strategies for analysis and integration of biological and clinical data. Together with Prof. Pierre Baldi he published the first text book on bioinformatics and machine learning in 1998 (MIT Press). In his research the use of the patient trajectory concept is a major theme that exploits EHR and registry information on the patient-past in terms of prior diseases, comorbidities, prescriptions, lab values, omics data, wearable data, socio-economic data among other types of data. Dr. Brunak’s research combines scientific disciplines in novel ways, including computer technology (supercomputer hardware, data protection techniques and software including machine learning techniques), biological, biomedical and biotechnological insights. Dr. Brunak has been chairing the Research and Infrastructure committee of the Danish National Genome Center, a state agency that manages a single, national repository where all whole genome sequencing data from the Danish healthcare sector by law is mandated to be kept for subsequent use within treatment and research. This repository can, when permissions are given, be linked to Danish EHR and registry data holding deep phenotyping information. Dr. Brunak has been a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences since 2016, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters since 2004 and the European Molecular Biology Organization since 2009.
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Steven R. Patierno, PhD serves as the Charles D. Watts Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology and Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the Duke University School Medicine, and as Deputy Director of the Duke Cancer Institute (DCI). He earned a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy from the University of Connecticut, a PhD in molecular pharmacology from the Graduate School of Biomedical Science, University of Texas Health Science Center-MD Anderson Cancer Institute in Houston Texas, and did postdoctoral training at the University of Southern California (USC) Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center in molecular oncology and carcinogenesis. He was the Vivian Gill Distinguished Professor of Oncology, and Professor of Pharmacology, Physiology and Urology at the GWU School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and served as Executive Director of The George Washington University Cancer Center for ten years prior to moving to Duke in 2012. Dr. Patierno’s translational research laboratory has been funded continuously for nearly 30 years. He is internationally recognized for research on molecular oncology, the genomics of cancer disparities, and for his pioneering work addressing the multi-level drivers of cancer disparities. He help found the AACR Science of Cancer Disparities Annual Conference now its 18th year. He received the AACR 2019 Distinguished Cancer Disparities Research Award was recognized as a Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Institute, by Duke University for his extensive work in cancer health equity, and by numerous organizations for impactful community engagement.
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Prof Trevor Graham is director of the Centre for Evolution and Cancer at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, UK. His interdisciplinary Genomics and Evolutionary Dynamics lab combines wet-lab molecular biology (mainly genomics) with expertise in bioinformatics and mathematical modelling to measure somatic evolutionary dynamics, with a particular interest in colorectal cancer and pre-malignant conditions in the colon. Trevor was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2022 for his work on cancer evolutionary genomics.
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Upon completing her PhD studies, Professor Caroline Dive moved to Aston University's School of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Birmingham where she established her own group studying mechanisms of drug induced tumour cell death, before moving to The University of Manchester to continue this research. Caroline was awarded a Lister Institute of Preventative Medicine Research Fellowship before joining the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute (CRUK MI) in 2003. Currently, she is Interim Director of the Institute and Director of the CRUK Cancer Biomarker Centre, with research spanning tumour biology, preclinical pharmacology, biomarker discovery, biomarker assay validation and clinical qualification to regulatory standards, bioinformatics, biostatistics and most recently, digital clinical trials.
Caroline was awarded the Pasteur-Weizmann/Servier International Prize in 2012 for her Biomarker Research, the AstraZeneca Prize for Women in Pharmacology in 2016 and was presented with the 2019 Heine H. Hansen Lectureship Award by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC). She is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2015), Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society (2012) and Fellow of the European Academy of Cancer Sciences (2011). In 2017, Caroline was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for her services to cancer research. Most recently, she became an elected member of EMBO (2020), received the first inaugural Johann Anton Merck Award in recognition for exceptional contributions to the field of preclinical oncology (2020), and was the recipient of the Mary J. Matthews Pathology/Translational Distinguished Service Award by IASLC (2021). Caroline was the President of the European Association for Cancer Research (2020 – 2022).
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Professor Katherine Payne (ORCiD 0000-0002-3938-4350) is an academic health economist with over 28-years applied and methodological research experience in the economic evaluation (using RCTs and decision-analytic models) and valuation (using discrete choice experiments and contingent valuation) of health care interventions and specifically precision medicine and cancer early detection and prevention.
She has over 170 peer-reviewed publications with a key role as lead health economist for numerous multi-disciplinary research programmes and projects. Katherine is a co-applicant on the Manchester Cancer Research UK International Cancer Early Detection Alliance called Manchester/MCRC Early Recognition of Cancer And Decision Options (MERCADO). She is also a key researcher in the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre theme on cancer prevention and early detection.
She has been a member of numerous national (UK, Canada, The Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Singapore, Luxembourg) funding review panels appraising projects including specific funding calls for precision medicine, use of artificial intelligence and cancer prevention and early detection. Of specific interest, she is a member of the CRUK Early Detection and Diagnosis Research Committee.
Katherine has a particular interest in the use of economic evidence to inform decision-making in practice. She was a member of a National Institute for Health and Care Excellence Technology Appraisal Committee between October 2003 and 2012. In late 2022, she was appointed as a member of the UK National Screening Committee Research and Methodology Subgroup.
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Professor Katie Robb leads the Cancer Behaviour Research Group at the University of Glasgow. Katie is passionate about reducing inequalities in cancer and her research focuses on optimising early detection and diagnosis behaviours. Her research includes advancing the co-design of interventions to improve access to cancer screening for all. Katie has an MA in Psychology from the University of St Andrews and an MSc and PhD in Health Psychology from University College London.
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Dr. Rosenthal is an Assistant Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a Senior Physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a Fellow of the Society of Abdominal Radiology. His doctoral work in Computer Science focused on machine learning techniques for medical image analysis. He completed his MD-PhD work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, attended Radiology residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and completed a fellowship in cancer imaging at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He focuses his clinical work on the imaging of gastrointestinal cancers, most notably in pancreatic cancer.
Dr. Rosenthal’s current research uses artificial intelligence to improve the early detection of pancreatic cancer. His group has developed methods for automatically measuring body and fat mass from routine CT scans and has shown that these markers are early predictors of pancreatic cancer. His team is also developing screening methods to identify individuals at increased risk for pancreatic cancer using artificial intelligence analysis of electronic medical record data.
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Dr. Hilary Robbins is an epidemiologist at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/WHO) in Lyon, France. Dr. Robbins’ work is focused on risk-tailored approaches to cancer screening, using tools such as risk prediction models and biomarkers. She co-leads the IARC Integrative Epidemiology Team, a group of 12 scientists, trainees, and staff from 12 different countries, as well as the Lung Cancer Cohort Consortium (LC3). The current work of the LC3 aims to develop and validate a custom panel of protein biomarkers intended for use in lung cancer screening. Dr. Robbins also studies biomarkers for early detection of HPV-related cancers.
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Richard has been a patient advocate for over two decades and has sat on strategic groups in the UK and in Europe, as well as working on individual research studies as a patient partner. He was the patient co-author of the 2015 Cancer Strategy for England, and an advisor to the DHSC during the early stages of the Covid pandemic. He is the Chair of the NCRI Advocates Forum and the former Chair of the Stakeholder Forum at BBMRI-ERIC (the European biobanking collaboration), and works with patient groups and advocates in Europe, Africa, Canada and the USA, and with Genomics England and industry, from start-ups to Big Pharma. Richard has been working with Cancer Research UK since the charity was founded, has served on almost all its funding committees, and has sat on the Cancer Grand Challenge Advocacy Advisory Panel and on a CGC project. He helped found the AllTrials campaign and useMYdata movement (which he currently also Chairs), and he is the founding co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Research Involvement and Engagement. Richard has so far survived two cancers and a heart emergency, and has continued co-morbidities and late effects. He has participated in four interventional studies and nine others, all spread over the past 25 years. His professional life has included careers in education, journalism and local government, and as a patient advocate he has been involved with over 50 research studies and programmes. Richard’s ambition is to spend more time reading books on beaches.
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Jamil Rivers is a leading advocate for people of color (POC) with cancer. As a pioneering activist for equitable care in cancer — and through the organization she founded — she has helped thousands of patients overcome disparities in cancer care and aided cancer centers in identifying race-based gaps in services. As CEO of The Chrysalis Initiative, Jamil leads a team of experienced cancer coaches delivering enhanced navigation to patients and equity specialists helping healthcare providers to erase race-based shortcomings in care that result from conscious and unconscious bias.
A finance graduate of Rutgers University, with an MBA from Arcadia University and finance master’s from Southampton University, Jamil has additional certifications in such areas as leadership, IT, and compliance and ethics, including through the Wharton School, U.C. Berkely, and Villanova University.
Jamil has affiliations, trainings, and advocacy activities with Susan G. Komen; Living Beyond Breast Cancer; and her initiative’s partners in the pharma/biomedical industries. She has spoken at many national conferences. Good Morning America and People magazine have featured Jamil’s own personal story of cancer survival and the success of her nonprofit organization in supporting justice in cancer care.
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Adam is a medical oncologist and NIHR Clinical Lecturer at UCL. His research uses bioinformatic and computational techniques to study the earliest stages of lung carcinogenesis. Interrogation of multi-omic data from preinvasive lung lesions has elucidated the timing of critical cancer hallmarks including chromosomal instability and immune evasion, generated powerful predictors of progression to cancer and suggested novel targets for cancer interception.
Adam completed a Masters in Mathematics and Physics at Warwick and worked as an aerospace engineer before training in Medicine at King’s College London. During postgraduate clinical academic training he applied his mathematical background to learn bioinformatic and computational techniques in biology. He undertook a Wellcome funded PhD fellowship with Sam Janes at UCL, where his work on preinvasive lung cancer has defined our understanding of how this cancer develops. His current work combines in-vitro and in-silico techniques to further probe the very first steps in cancer development and find ways to prevent them.
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Bethany has extensive experience in the evaluation of diagnostic and screening tests. As a member of Warwick Screening, she works on a wide portfolio of applied test evaluation projects spanning across many disease areas, including RCTs, comparative diagnostic accuracy studies, analyses of routinely collected data, and economic modelling studies. She undertakes systematic reviews and decision analytic modelling on the clinical and cost-effectiveness of medical tests for the NIHR Evidence Synthesis Programme on behalf of a range of policy makers, including the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). She is also a member of the UK National Screening Committee.
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Peggy Hannon, PhD, MPH is a professor in the Department of Health Systems and Population Health at the University of Washington School of Public Health and director of the Health Promotion Research Center, a CDC Prevention Research Center. She also co-leads the Optimizing Implementation in Cancer Control (OPTICC) Center, a NCI Implementation Science Center for Cancer Control. She completed her training in public health and social psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. Dr. Hannon’s research focuses on dissemination and implementation research, with an emphasis on cancer screening, workplace health promotion, and communities experiencing health disparities. She develops and tests interventions in partnership with community-based organizations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state and local departments of health to disseminate and implement evidence-based practices with workplaces, federally qualified health centers, and other community settings.
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Margarete is the Oncology Lead in the Centre for Genomics Research at AstraZeneca, and an Honorary Consultant Haematologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.
Following her medical training at Oxford, she trained as an academic haematologist in London and Cambridge, focussing on haematopoietic ageing and the pre-clinical evolution of cancer. She co-leads the NHS Clonal Haematopoiesis Clinic in Cambridge, with the goal of preventing myeloid malignancies.
She joined AstraZeneca in 2022, where she leads the Oncology research and development at the Centre for Genomics Research in Discovery Sciences.
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An active patient advocate for over 30 years, including 20 years of Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) in health research, Angela has personal experience of long-term illnesses and cancer-related end of life caring.
Starting in the voluntary sector as helpline volunteer, Trustee and then CEO, her focus shifted to Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) in health research.
As well as serving on several advisory and commissioning boards/panels, she is involved in individual research studies (mostly cancer related), contributes to articles and papers, delivers workshops and lectures on PPI and carries out PPI advisory work.
A member of Independent Cancer Patients’ Voice following attendance at its 2022 VOICE course, she also regularly works with Cancer Research UK.
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Professor Antoniou is a genetic epidemiologist and has made major contributions to the understanding of the genetic basis of common cancers and the development of cancer risk prediction models. Using innovative approaches to analyse data from large population-based and family studies, he has provided reliable estimates of cancer risks for carriers of mutations and BRCA1 and BRCA2 that are used every day in the clinic. His work showed that PALB2 was a high-risk breast cancer gene. He leads the coordinating centre of the international Consortium of Modifiers of BRCA1/2 and has demonstrated the importance of genetic modifiers of cancer risk for BRCA1 and BRCA2 carriers and that these modifiers lead to clinically important differences in cancer risk. He led the development of the BOADICEA model, a comprehensive risk prediction model that is used to predict breast and ovarian cancer risks using genetic and non-genetic factors. BOADICEA is endorsed by clinical guidelines in several countries. His team implemented BOADICEA into the CanRisk (www.canrisk.org) online tool used by clinicians across the world to counsel thousands of patients daily, to guide decisions on screening and surgical and medical prevention of disease. In 2023, he was appointed as director of the Cancer Research UK, Cancer Data Driven (CD3) programme.
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Angela Wood is Professor of Biostatistics and Health Data Science at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge. She holds leadership roles for major health data science initiatives, including BHF Data Science Centre Associate Director and Theme Lead for Population Data; co-Lead of the NIHR Cambridge BRC Data Science and Population Health theme; Regional co-Lead for Health Data Research UK Cambridge; Programme Leader in the NIHR Blood and Transplant Research Unit in Donor Health and Behaviour and co-Lead of the Data-Analysis Work-package in BigData@Heart. Her research focuses on the frontiers of big data and epidemiology, underpinned by major population resources and informed by applied questions of major population health. She has developed novel methods and applied them in the analysis of large, complex datasets (e.g., ~67M individuals in CVD-COVID-UK consortium; >3M participants in Emerging Risk Factors Collaboration, EPIC-CVD and UK Biobank), providing new insights into chronic diseases, mainly cardiovascular disease, as well as COVID-19 and blood donation. With the BHF Data Science Centre and in partnership with NHS Digital, she has helped to establish access to the England-wide Electronic Health Record resource on >55M people and is developing innovative and principled methods for reproducible analysis of the resource. In biostatistics methodology research, she focuses largely on methods for utilising electronic health records to produce unbiased results for medical/epidemiological research, including handling measurement error, using repeated measures of risk factors, missing data problems, multiple imputation, risk prediction and meta-analysis.
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Dr. Natalia Kunst is a Senior Research Fellow (Associate Professor) at the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York, with additional affiliations at the Yale University Schools of Public Health and Medicine and Harvard Medical School & Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. Dr. Kunst is a decision sciences and health economics researcher with interests in uncertainty and evidence in decision-analytic modelling and health economic evaluations, value of information analysis, and health disparities.
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Dr Wright is a Research Fellow in Health Economics, based in the Manchester Centre for Health Economics, The University of Manchester. His primary research interests are in the evaluation of complex interventions while taking account of imperfect implementation and uptake. These issues are particularly pertinent for cancer screening programmes which rely on good uptake in populations and effective health service delivery to identify cancers at an earlier stage. To further his research Dr Wright was recently awarded a Wellcome Trust Early Career Award for a project titled “Providing economic evidence to inform and improve the implementation of cancer screening programmes”. This project will focus on alternative approaches to HPV sampling for cervical cancer screening and breast cancer risk-prediction in younger women. Dr Wright is also a member of the Adult Reference Group of the UK National Screening Committee, providing advice on health economics and modelling.
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Sandy Borowsky is Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of California, Davis. He is a surgical and molecular pathologist with experience in experimental and clinical cohort science, and directs the Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory at UC Davis Health and the Center for Genomic Pathology. Additionally, he is the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center co-Director of the Women’s Cancers Program, the UC-wide Athena Breast Health Program site- PI and WISDOM Study co-PI, Program Leader of the Pathology workgroup, and the Diagnosis and Treatment Clinical Care and Research Team, and a member of the Executive Board, and co-Director of the Pathology team for the I-SPY 2 clinical trials network. He is Co-PI of the California Precision Medicine Consortium, an All of US Healthcare Provider Organization and corresponding PI of the Nutrition for Precision Health All of US ancillary study, leading the California Partnership for Personalized Nutrition clinical centers. He is co-author of the California Cancer Plan, and a member of the HealthSperien MCED Consortium serving on the Clinical Utility task force. His laboratory focuses on experimental pathology including interpretation of animla models, cancer phenotypes, immunology, and functional imaging technology. Translational aspects include new clinical assay development and interpretation, radiologic-pathologic image registration, comparative analysis, immunohistochemistry, and molecular analyses.
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Francesco founded Elypta with his Ph.D. advisor Jens Nielsen in 2017 after spearheading the early entrepreneurial activities as interim CEO since 2015. As Chief Scientific Officer, he oversees the technical plan and leads all scientific projects at Elypta. He acts as deputy CEO. Francesco is also Visiting Researcher at Karolinska Institute, Sweden in Jonas Bergh lab.
Francesco obtained a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Padova, Italy in 2011 and a Ph.D. in Systems Biology at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden in 2015. In 2016, he was Visiting Scholar at the University of California, San Diego in Bernhard Palsson lab.
His research resulted in 4 patent families paving the way to the foundation of Elypta. He has authored 30 scientific papers on cancer research. He lectured in international advanced courses in systems biology, co-organized 2 national conferences, contributed to the National Encyclopedia of Italy, and was an invited speaker in several congresses and symposia - including for the EU Joint Research Centre.
Francesco is a member of the American Association of Cancer Research, the European Association of Cancer Research, the European Association of Urology, the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the Aspen Institute (Italian Talents Abroad).
Francesco was enlisted in the MIT Technology Review 35 Under 35 (Europe) in 2018 andin the GEN A-List Top 10 Under 40 in 2019. He was the 2019 recipient for the Karin Markides Prize and for the 2019 National SKAPA Innovation Prize in Memory of A. Nobel.
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Meagan is a busy mom of three boys; Matiss, Kristers and Maksis with a family passion for sports and activity. In 2021 cancer hit her immediate family, starting with her brother and six months later herself related to both carrying Lynch Syndrome. She believes in early detection, screening and genetic testing awareness as it has been instrumental to her family.
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Brian is an academic GP working in the NHS and an Associate Professor in Primary Care working at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford. He works to improve the diagnostic process for patients with suspected cancer. This work focusses on understanding the evaluation of symptoms, appropriate test use, and clinical pathway development. He has focussed on the evaluation of patients with non-specific symptoms and the development of NHS Rapid Diagnostic Centres for patients with non-specific symptoms through the ACE programme and contributing to national guidelines on the use of Faecal Immunochemical Testing in primary care. His cancer research group conducts research in four main areas: health records data; implementation science; diagnostic reasoning; and clinical trials. As the early detection lead for the CRUK Oxford Cancer Centre he investigates community-based multi-cancer early detection (MCED) testing including SYMPLIFY, the largest prospective MCED study in patients with symptoms of cancer. With colleagues at the Oncology Clinical Trials Office and Primary Care Clinical Trials Unit he is developing a portfolio of Precision Prevention and Early Detection studies as part of the newly formed CRUK Oxford Clinical Trials Unit with industry and academia.
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Dr. Catriona Jamieson is a leading physician-scientist who discovered missplicing, RNA hyper-editing, and splice isoform switching as mechanisms governing human cancer stem cell maintenance in selective niches. This pioneering cancer stem cell research has transformed therapies, including JAK2 and sonic hedgehog-inhibitor trials for myeloproliferative neoplasms and leukemia stem cell targeting. Her research and efforts lead to the 2019 FDA approval of fedratinib for the treatment of adult patients with intermediate-2 or high-risk primary or secondary Myelofibrosis. She sent the first bioreactors with cancer organoids that detect activation of cancer stem cell properties in real-time into space on April 8, 2022, as part of the Integrated Space Stem Cell Orbital Research (ISSCOR) Program. The purpose is to identify biomarkers for early detection, and interventional leads and lay the groundwork for future cancer stem cell research in space. She is a Professor of Medicine, Chief of the Division of Regenerative Medicine, the Koman Family Presidential Endowed Chair in Cancer Research, and the Director of the Sanford Stem Cell Institute at the University of California San Diego. Dr. Jaimeson received the 2017 MPN Hero’s Award, the Moores Cancer Center Rell Sunn Award in 2020 (past awardees include Roger Tsien, Kary Mullis, Tony Hunter, Brian Druker, Carl June, J. Craig Venter), and the Top Doctor for the 10th consecutive year by Castle Connolly in 2021. Most recently, her visionary leadership resulted in the single largest gift in the history of UC San Diego, for $150 million from T. Denny Sanford, resulting in the creation of the Sanford Stem Cell Institute.
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Shonit Punwani is Professor of Magnetic Resonance and Cancer Imaging and Consultant Radiologist at UCLH. His medical training, undertaken at UCL, was supplemented with a PhD in MRI Physics. He completed post-graduate training in Medicine at Northwick Park, before training as a radiologist at UCLH. He was awarded a Walport NIHR Clinical Lectureship, before being appointed as a Senior Lecturer at UCL and Consultant Radiologist at UCLH. In 2023, Professor Punwani received an NIHR Professorship Award.
He leads the 3T MRI research facilities that provide the infrastructure for imaging trials at UCLH. He is the research and development lead for radiology at UCLH, responsible for the provision of imaging services for clinical trials at UCLH. He is Director of Clinical Imaging at the UCLH Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) and also directs the BRC Medical Imaging Trials Unit (the first unit of its kind dedicated to the support of clinical trials involving new/novel imaging methods). He co-chairs the UCLH Cancer Collaborative Diagnostic Expert Reference Group with a remit to facilitate the spread of clinically proven imaging technologies within the region.
He has a specialist clinical and research interest in the application and development of local and whole-body quantitative and functional MRI methods for imaging prostate cancer.
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Helen discovered she has Lynch syndrome following a diagnosis of endometrial cancer. This cancer diagnosis also led to Helen consenting to join the 100,000 Genomes Project, a pivotal moment that ultimately inspired her to join the Participant Panel at Genomics England and eventually become its Vice Chair for Cancer in 2023. Helen is a passionate advocate for people with gynaecological cancers and genetic cancer susceptibilities. She is a patient representative for the endometrial cancer (formerly known as) Genomics England Clinical Interpretation Partnership domain, the CRUK-funded CanGene-CanVar programme, and the (former) NCRI Gynaecological Group. Moreover, Helen established and leads Peaches Patient Voices in partnership with Peaches Womb Cancer Trust to promote and facilitate involvement of people affected by womb cancer in research.
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