CRUK–AACR Joint Conference on Engineering and Physical Sciences in Oncology 2019: Speakers

Sangeeta is a cancer researcher, MIT professor, and biotech entrepreneur who works to adapt technologies developed in the computer industry for medical innovation. Trained as both a physician and engineer at Harvard, MIT, and Brown University, Sangeeta's laboratory leverages ‘tiny technologies’ of miniaturization to yield inventions with new applications in tissue regeneration, stem cell differentiation, medical diagnostics, predictive toxicology, and drug delivery. She and her trainees have launched multiple biotechnology companies to improve human health. Sangeeta has received many honors including the Lemelson-MIT Prize – known as the ‘Oscar for inventors’ – and the Heinz Medal for ground-breaking inventions and advocacy for women in STEM fields. She is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Director of the Marble Centre for Cancer Nanomedicine at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Science, the National Academy of Inventors, and Brown University's Board of Trustees.

Kevin is Professor of Biomedical Magnetic Resonance in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge and a senior group leader in the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. He got his BA and DPhil in Oxford, the latter on 1H NMR studies of cells with Prof Iain Campbell FRS, and then joined the laboratory of Prof Sir George Radda FRS in 1983, becoming a Royal Society University Research Fellow in 1986. He moved to a lectureship in Manchester in 1990 and in 1993 to a lectureship in Cambridge, where he became Professor in 2005. The current focus of his work is to develop novel imaging methods to detect cancer, disease progression and to monitor early tumour responses to treatment. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2012, to the European Academy of Cancer Sciences in 2014 and to the Presidency of the European Society for Molecular Imaging (2018) in 2017. He was awarded the European Society of Molecular Imaging Award in 2013 and the Gold Medal of the World Molecular Imaging Society in 2014.

Joe, a physicist and an engineer by training, holds positions as Professor and Gordon Moore Endowed Chair, Biomedical Engineering Department Vice Chair; Director, Center for Spatial Systems Biomedicine; and Associate Director for Biophysical Oncology, Knight Cancer Institute at the Oregon Health & Science University. He is also Emeritus Professor, University of California, San Francisco; and Senior Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is Principal Investigator of the National Cancer Institute/Research Center for Cancer Systems Biology Consortium, "Measuring, Modeling and Controlling Heterogeneity"; PI of an NIH program to contribute to further development of the NIH Library of Integrated Network-based Cellular Signatures program; PI of a Prospect Creek Foundation study "Serial Measurement of Molecular and Architectural Responses to Therapy"; PI of a Brenden Colson Center for Pancreatic Health; and PI of a Susan G. Komen project to identify the mechanisms by which ERBB2+ breast cancer cells escape inhibition by ERRB2-targeted therapies.

Molly is currently Professor of Biomedical Materials and Regenerative Medicine and the Research Director for Biomedical Material Sciences in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College. She joined Imperial in 2004 after postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Professor Robert Langer in the Chemical Engineering Department at MIT. Prior to this she graduated from Bath University with a first class honours degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences and was then awarded a PhD in biophysical investigations of specific biomolecular interactions and single biomolecule mechanics from the Laboratory of Biophysics and Surface Analysis at the University of Nottingham (2000).

Sylvia is a Professor in the Department of Radiology in the Stanford School of Medicine. Dr. Plevritis holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering (Stanford, 1992) with concentration on MRI spectroscopic imaging of tumors. She also holds an MS in Health Services Research (Stanford, 1996), with concentration on the evaluation of cancer screening programs on reducing cancer mortality.  Dr. Plevritis is the Director of the Stanford Center for Cancer Systems Biology (CCSB), Director of the Cancer Systems Biology Scholars (CSBS) Program, and the co-Section Chief of the Integrative Biomedical Imaging Informatics at Stanford (IBIIS).

Slyvia is a Principal Investigator of the Stanford Cancer Intervention Surveillance Network (CISNET), which develops mathematical models of cancer progression and evaluates the effectiveness of mammography and MRI in screening for breast cancer and CT in screening for lung cancer.

Benjamin is a theoretician with research interests both in the physics of interacting quantum systems, and in the application of statistical approaches to biologically-inspired problems in stem cell and developmental biology. He has held a faculty position at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge since 1995, and currently holds the Herchel Smith Chair in Physics. He is also an associate of the Wellcome Trust-CRUK Gurdon Institute.

Dr. Choyke directs the Molecular Imaging Program. His research interests include the translation of molecular imaging methods, such as MRI, optical and radionuclide/PET into the clinic. His primary clinical focus is on imaging, diagnosis and therapy of prostate cancer. In the lab, Dr. Choyke focuses on understanding uptake of various PET agents, including PSMA, at the genomic level. In addition, his lab works on the development of new imaging methods for cancer including cell labeling with PET agents, and imaging the tumor microenvironment including immune markers.

René Bernards received his Ph.D. in 1984 from the University of Leiden. He joined the laboratory of Robert Weinberg at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, USA for his postdoctoral training, were he worked with Stephen Friend on the isolation of the retinoblastoma tumor suppressor gene. He was appointed assistant professor at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in 1988. In 1992 he joined the Netherlands Cancer Institute. In 1994 he was appointed part time professor of molecular carcinogenesis at Utrecht University, The Netherlands.

His scientific accomplishments include the development of MammaPrint, the first clinically-used gene expression profile for breast cancer. To bring this discovery to the clinic he co-founded "Agendia", a genomics-based diagnostic company that started offering the first microarray-based diagnostic test for the clinical management of breast cancer in 2004. His laboratory also developed the first shRNA vector for gene silencing in mammalian cells and used this vector to create a genome-scale library of shRNA vectors. His laboratory has used this vector collection to identify biomarkers of response to cancer drugs and to identify particularly powerful drug combinations for the treatment of cancer. Some of the combination therapies suggested by these genetic screens are currently showing promise in the clinic.

He received several awards for his research, including 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, the Spinoza award from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research and the Queen Wilhelmina Research Prize from the Dutch Cancer Society. He is also a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Charles Swanton FRCP BSc PhD is a clinician scientist, focusing his work on understanding the challenges inherent in the management of metastatic cancer and their drug resistant and incurable nature. Charles completed his PhD in 1998 at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories on the UCL MBPhD programme before completing his medical oncology and Cancer Research UK (CRUK) funded postdoctoral clinician scientist training in 2008.

He was appointed CRUK senior clinical research fellow and Group Leader of the Translational Cancer Therapeutics laboratory at the London Research Institute (now part of the Francis Crick Institute) and consultant medical oncologist at the Royal Marsden Hospital in 2008. Charles was appointed Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Chair in Personalised Cancer Medicine at the UCL Cancer Institute and Consultant Thoracic Medical Oncologist at UCL Hospitals in 2011. Charles is also the Chief Investigator of the CRUK TRACERx clinical study to decipher lung cancer evolution and is co-director of the CRUK Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence.

Wolfgang Weber, MD is Professor and Chair of the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the Technical University of Munich in Germany (TUM). Dr. Weber is a graduate of the TUM Medical School. He was trained in Nuclear Medicine at TUM and joined the faculty of the Department of Nuclear Medicine at TUM in 2001. From 2004-2007 he was Associate Professor at the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 2007 he was appointed Professor and Chair of the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the University of Freiburg in Germany. In 2013 he returned to the USA and became Chief of Nuclear Medicine at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center as well as Professor of Radiology at the Weill Cornell Medical College. He held both positions until the end of 2017. Dr. Weber’s research is focused on molecular imaging of cancer for planning and monitoring of therapeutic interventions. He is also interested in targeted radionuclide therapy of cancer and theranostics. Dr. Weber has published more than 250 papers in leading scientific journals including the Journal of Clinical Oncology, PNAS as well journals of the Nature series. He has served on the editorial board of several scientific journals such as the Journal of Nuclear Medicine, European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, Clinical Cancer Research and Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Donald E. Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., is the Founding Director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He received his B.A., M.A., M.Phil., M.D. and Ph.D. from Yale University.

Ingber is a pioneer in the field of biologically inspired engineering, and at the Wyss Institute, he currently leads a multifaceted effort to develop breakthrough bioinspired technologies to advance healthcare and to improve sustainability. His work has led to major advances in mechanobiology, tumor angiogenesis, tissue engineering, systems biology, nanobiotechnology and translational medicine. Through his work, Ingber also has helped to break down boundaries between science, art and design. Ingber has authored more than 430 publications and 150 patents, founded 5 companies, and has presented 517 plenary presentations and invited lectures world-wide. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Inventors, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was named one of the Top 20 Translational Researchers world-wide in 2012 (Nature Biotechnology), a Leading Global Thinker of 2015 (Foreign Policy magazine), and has received numerous other honors in a broad range of disciplines, including the Robert A. Pritzker Award and the Shu Chien Award (Biomedical Engineering Society), the Rous Whipple Award (American Society for Investigative Pathology), the Lifetime Achievement Award (Society of In Vitro Biology), the Leading Edge Award (Society of Toxicology), Founders Award (Biophysical Society) and the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Innovator Award.