Advisory panels

Dr Rick Klausner chairs the Grand Challenge Advisory Panel. An award-winning molecular biologist, Dr Klausner made many important contributions to both immunology and cancer research before becoming Director of the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 1995. Subsequently, he served as Executive Director for Global Health at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where he oversaw the Gates Grand Challenges in Global Health.

He is a past President of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also the former Chief Medical Officer of Illumina Inc, one of the companies driving the 21^st century genomics revolution through its pioneering next generation sequencing technology.

Dr. Klausner brings to our panel a lifetime’s experience in fighting cancer, as a clinician, a scientist, an entrepreneur and a global policy maker.

Professor Sir Adrian Bird, PhD, CBE, FRS, FRSE is Buchanan Professor of Genetics at the University of Edinburgh, and is responsible for the fundamental discovery that DNA has a unique ‘epigenetic’ as well as genetic code, which is of crucial importance to health and disease, including many types of cancer.

Professor Bird has won numerous scientific prizes for his work, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was knighted in the 2014 New Years Honours List for services to science. He has served as Deputy Director and a Governor of the Wellcome Trust, and is currently a Trustee of Cancer Research UK.

Professor Suzanne Cory, AC, PhD, FAA, FRS is one of the world’s most eminent molecular biologists. An Australian, she was one of the founders of the field of ‘apoptosis’, the study of how cells are programmed to die. Her work showed that cell death is just as important to cancer as cell growth, and her insights continue to have enormous impact in the field today.

Professor Cory is a past president of the Australian Academy of Science, and former Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne. Her many awards include the French decoration of Chevalier de l’Ordre de la Légion d’Honneur, and she has the notable distinction of having had a high school named in her honour.

Professor Edward E. Harlow Jnr, PhD is Professor of Biological Chemistry and Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. In the 1980s, Professor Harlow and his colleagues, including Sir David Lane, a fellow Grand Challenge panellist, were responsible for a major advance in cancer biology, when they discovered that molecules that protect our cells from cancerous changes – called tumour suppressors – are switched off by other molecules that promote the disease.

Professor Harlow has been awarded the American Cancer Society’s Medal of Honor, and has been elected to both the US National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. He was a special advisor to the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) Director Harold Varmus, and in that role, set up the NCI Provocative Questions initiative, designed to stimulate risky, early-stage cancer research in the US.

He has a wealth of experience in both academia and industry, the latter as Chief Scientific Officer of Constellation Pharmaceuticals, and has sat on the Scientific Advisory Boards of numerous biotech companies.

Professor Sir David Lane, PhD FRS FRSE is one of the world’s most eminent cancer scientists. His discovery of the p53 protein in the 1970s revolutionised our understanding of how cells, including cancer cells, grow and divide. p53, dubbed ‘the Guardian of the Genome’, was the first tumour suppressor found within our cells, and we now know that p53 is faulty or inactivated in the majority of human cancers. Sir David has had a lifelong association with p53 research, and continues to be a leading figure in the field, in terms of both discovery research and drug development.

Formerly Cancer Research UK’s Chief Scientist, Sir David is currently Chief Scientist of Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), and Scientific Director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. Knighted in 2000 for services to science, Sir David is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Dr Christopher P. Wild, PhD, a distinguished cancer epidemiologist, is the Director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialised cancer agency of the World Health Organisation. IARC’s objective is to promote international collaboration in cancer research, and in his role as Director, Dr Wild has developed the Agency’s mission to understand the risks of cancer, and to mobilise the international community in a concerted prevention and early detection strategy, with particular reference to low and middle income countries. IARC is a pioneer in the global cancer effort, acting as a global reference for cancer information, and holding a unique biobank of 10 million cancer samples from around the world.

Dr Wild’s experience in effective coordination of international efforts, coupled with his epidemiological expertise, will provide the panel with unique insights into the global cancer problem.

Professor Brian J. Druker, MD is a true hero of the cancer field. He is responsible for a revolution in the treatment of cancer through his development of Gleevec, the first drug to target the genetic defects of a particular cancer while leaving healthy cells unharmed. Gleevec is now the treatment of choice for patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia, and has led the way for many more of the targeted drug therapies now in use in the clinic.

Professor Druker heads the groundbreaking Knight Cancer Institute in Oregon, and is the recipient of some of science’s greatest honours, amongst them the Japan Prize, the Lasker-Debakey Clinical Medical Research Award and the Kettering Prize of the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association of Physicians.

Professor Nic Jones is the Director of the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute, a unique partnership between Cancer Research UK, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust and The University of Manchester. He is also Director of the CRUK Manchester Major Centre. Professor Jones leads a research team at the CRUK Manchester Institute who are investigating networks of molecules in cells that can help drive cancer development and growth.

Professor Jones’ group are focussing on one particular network that reacts to many different signals - like growth factors - and controls key processes in cells such as when to divide and to self-destruct.

In January 2016, Professor Jones stepped down from the position of CRUK Chief Scientist following five years in the role.  During this time, he helped to shape the life-saving research we fund and translate it into new treatments for patients. 

After graduating Magna cum laude from Brandeis University, Dr. Jaffee received her M.D. from New York Medical College. She completed her internship and residency at University of Pittsburgh, Presbyterian-University Hospital, then received an NIH Research Training Grant as a Research Fellow and Principal Investigator at the University of Pittsburgh under the guidance of Fran Finn, Ph.D., Research Director. 

Dr. Jaffee came to The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore where she was a Senior Oncology Fellow from 1989 – 1992. In 1992, Dr. Jaffee was appointed Assistant Professor of Oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHUSOM), and Professor in 2002.  She holds faculty positions in the Graduate Programs in Pharmacology, Immunology and Cell and Molecular Medicine (CMM). Dr. Jaffee currently serves as Deputy Director for the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center (SKCCC) at Johns Hopkins.

Dr. Jaffee has served on many committees at the National Cancer Institute and is currently Chair of the National Cancer Advisory Board.  

René Bernards is a professor of molecular carcinogenesis at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. His laboratory uses functional genomic approaches to find vulnerabilities of cancers that can be exploited therapeutically. Using the concept of synthetic lethality, his laboratory searches for combinations of drugs that are lethal for cancer cells and for vulnerabilities of cancer cells of a defined genotype.

Amongst his honours are the Pezcoller Foundation-FECS Recognition for Contribution to Oncology, the Ernst W. Bertner Award for Cancer Research from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, the ESMO Lifetime Achievement Award in Translational Research in Breast Cancer. He is also a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences.