Leonard B. Saltz, MD, has been appointed Chief of the Gastrointestinal Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He had been Acting Chief since last year, after David Paul Kelsen, MD, stepped down after serving in the position for 20 years.
Saltz has been at MSKCC since 1989, and was appointed Co-Leader of the Colorectal Disease Management Team in 2001. He has developed an integrated translational research program in colorectal cancer that he will now be expanding to other GI cancers. He also serves on the National Cancer Institute's Rectal and Anal Cancer Task Force and is a co-leader of the Alliance NCI Cooperative Research Group's efforts in colon and rectal cancers.
Goutham Narla, MD, PhD, has been named the first Harrington Distinguished Scholar at University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center's Harrington Discovery Institute for his research that identified a key signaling pathway in advanced/late stage lung cancer that can be targeted with two existing FDA-approved drugs (trifluoperazine and erlotinib).
The Distinguished Scholar Program is designed to support physician--scientists with outstanding promise in advancing the treatment of patients, with the grant funding and peer network of experts at Harrington. Narla, formerly of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, will continue his research at UH, where he is Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the Institute of Transformative Molecular Medicine at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and a medical geneticist at UH Case Medical Center.
Frank Penedo, PhD, has joined Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine as Professor of Medical Social Sciences. He has also been named Roswell Park Professor, and has been chosen to lead the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern's Cancer Control and Survivorship Research Program. He will also work to establish a Center for Bio-behavioral Oncology.
Joseph Paul Eder, MD, has been appointed Director of Experimental Therapeutics and the Phase I Research Group at Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital. Most recently he served as Senior Director in the Clinical Discovery Team at AstraZeneca, focusing on the Design of Phase I clinical trials, and as Director of AstraZeneca's Boston site. He also holds an Associate Clinical Professor appointment at Harvard Medical School.
Daruka Mahadevan, MD, PhD, has been named Director of the Phase One Clinical Trials Program and Associate Director of Research with The West Clinic, and Professor in the Division of Hematology Oncology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. He will conduct first-in-human clinical trials with novel drugs for patients with all solid tumor types as well as patients with MDS, CLL, and NHL.
The Pacific Meso Center has appointed Raymond M. Wong, PhD, its newest scientific researcher, responsible for the lab's malignant pleural mesothelioma research, which aims to advance therapeutic cancer immunotherapy strategies into clinical trials. Wong spent the past five years at MannKind Corporation researching cancer immunotherapy including preclinical development of cancer vaccines.
City of Hope has received a $5.2 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to develop a T cell-based immunotherapy that redirects a patient's own immune response against glioma stem cells.
"In this research, we are genetically engineering a central memory T cell that targets proteins expressed by glioma stem cells," Stephen J. Forman, MD, the Francis and Kathleen McNamara Distinguished Chair in Hematology and Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation and Director of the T Cell Immunotherapy Research Laboratory, said in a statement.
Mark Goodman, PhD, Professor and Endowed Chair in Imaging Science at Emory University School of Medicine's Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, has been awarded the Paul C. Aebersold Award for Outstanding Achievement in Basic Science applied to Nuclear Medicine. At Emory, Goodman has established the PET radiopharmaceutical research program; he has developed a novel imaging biomarker and seen its development through clinical trials; and his research has resulted in the translation of the first reported synthetic amino alicyclic acid radiolabeled with the PET for imaging both intracranial tumors and prostate cancer in patients. He is also Program Director in the Emory Center for Systems Imaging, and Professor of Hematology and Oncology and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
Ronan Kelly, MD, MBA, Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, has been awarded the NCCN Foundation's Young Investigator Award for his research, "Assessing the Impact of Chemotherapy Decision-Making while Utilizing the NCCN Guidelines When the Cost of Each Regimen is Provided to Prescribers and Patients." The two-year, $150,000 grant (started in 2011) funds research initiatives focused on assessing or improving outcomes of cancer care.
The University of Arizona Cancer Center has selected M. Peter Lance, MD, FRCP, to receive the Sydney E. Salmon, MD, Distinguished Senior Investigator award, and Steven P. Stratton, PhD, to receive the Distinguished Junior Investigator award. Both of Salmon Awards honor the memory of the center's founding director, and recognize faculty members for leadership in cancer research, grant support, publications, community service, and clinical responsibilities.
Lance, Professor of Medicine for Molecular and Cellular Biology and Public Health, also serves as the cancer center's Chief Cancer Prevention and Control Officer and Medical Director of the CaTS Clinical Research Unit; and Stratton is Associate Professor of Medicine and a member of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program.
D. Ross Cambridge, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the Thoracic Oncology Clinical Program at the University of Colorado, has been chosen to receive the 2012 Addario Lectureship Award, which annually recognizes an individual whose efforts aim to help eradicate lung cancer. His award-winning lecture is titled, "Rediscovering Lung Cancer," and he has most recently been researching ALK, EGFR, and KRAS mutations in lung cancer, and assessing which targeted therapies present the least toxicity for patients.
Ilana Cass, MD, Vice-Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, has been accepted into the year-long Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine Fellowship. The program, part of Drexel University College of Medicine's International Center for Executive Leadership in Academics, develops the professional and personal skills required to lead and manage in the current health care environment. Cass, also a faculty physician and specialist in gynecologic cancers at Cedars-Sinai's Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute, was nominated by the senior leadership at Cedars-Sinai, and chosen based on past leadership in health care practices, strategic initiatives, and administrative responsibilities.
Monica L.S. Wilt, RN, an oncology nurse at Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, has been selected by the Maryland School of Nursing Summer Institute in Nursing Informatics Planning Committee to present her paper titled, "Saving Patients from Barcoding," also recognized with an Outstanding Practice Paper Award.
Linette Atwood, has received the Richard A. Bloch Foundation's Cancer Survivorship Award for her work on the Patient Re-source Cancer Guide (http://www.PatientResource.com), an online treatment and facilities guide for newly diagnosed and restaged cancer patients in more than 7,000 medical facilities, and includes information on cancer types, supportive care, financial aid, clinical trials, and treatment facilities by geographic location.
Atwood is also a 10-year cancer survivor. "It's taught me about the critical need cancer patients have for accurate, reliable information so they can make smart, informed decisions about their care," she said in a statement.
Herbert and Florence Irving, donated an additional $40 million to his namesake Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University. The new grant will be used to recruit and retain cancer investigators to the center, and to support its current investigators and operations. Herbert, the co-founder of Sysco Corp. and his wife have supported Columbia since 1987, committing nearly $200 million to the medical center and its partner, New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
Max Saffian and Randi Eisner have created a Memorial Sloan-Kettering Giving Page, where their wedding guests can make a donation to MSKCC in lieu of gifts. All donations will go towards lung and esophageal cancer research, and are dedicated to the memories of the couple's fathers, Marvin and Larry, who battled these cancers.
Correction: In the June 25th Shop Talk, some of the information for Edward C. Halperin, MD, MA, was listed incorrectly. Dr. Halpern is now Chancellor for Health Affairs and Chief Executive Officer at New York Medical College; he was also named Provost for Biomedical Affairs for the Touro College and University System, which acquired New York Medical College in 2011.
Melanoma Research Alliance Awards $4.9 Million in Research Grants
The Melanoma Research Alliance has awarded 22 researchers grants in five categories, given for the following projects:
Pilot:
* Ramesh Rengan, MD, PhD, University of Pennsylvania, "RADVAX: Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy with Ipilimumab in Melanoma"
* Graeme Walker, PhD, Queensland Institute of Medical Research, "Discovery of Genes for Melanoma Development Using a Powerful New Approach"
Development:
* Susan M. Kaech, PhD, Yale University School of Medicine, "Regulatory Macrophages: A New Therapeutic Target in Melanoma"
* Mary-Jo Turk, PhD, Dartmouth College, "Mechanisms of Synergy between Vemurafenib and Immunotherapy for Melanoma"
Young Investigator:
* Barbara Bedogni, PhD, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, "Targeting Melanocyte Precursor Pathways for Melanoma Therapy"
* Fan Pan, MD, Johns Hopkins University, "Combining Targeted Therapy and Immunotherapy to Treat Melanoma"
* Sohail Tavazoie, MD, PhD, Rockefeller University, "Therapeutic Targeting of Novel Metastatic MicroRNAs in Human Melanoma"
* Richard Mark White, MD, PhD, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, "Transcrip-tional Elongation in BRAFV600E Sensitive and Resistant Melanoma"
* Xu Wu, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital, "Targeting NRAS Palmitoylation in Melanoma"
Established Investigator:
* Michael Atkins, MD, Georgetown University, "Kinetics and Effects of Vemurafenib on Intratumoral Immunity"
* Marcus Bosenberg, MD, PhD, Yale University, "Development of Effective Melanoma Combination Therapies"
* Jonathan Cebon, PhD, FRACP, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Melbourne-Austin Branch, "Targeting Inducible Invasive Cells in Melanoma"
* Douglas V. Faller, MD, PhD, Boston University, BU Medical Campus, "Targeting N-RAS as a Therapeutic Approach for Melanoma"
* Levi A. Garraway, MD, PhD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, "Development of Rational Therapeutic Regimens for NRAS-Mutant Melanoma"
* Thomas G. Graeber, PhD, UCLA, "Delineating BRAF Inhibitor Resistance Mechanisms Using Proteomic Profiling"
* Martin McMahon, PhD, University of California, San Francisco, "Mecha-nisms of Cooperation between BRAF and PI3'-Kinase Signaling in Melanoma"
* Jeffrey Ravetch, MD, PhD, Rockefeller University, "Enhanc-ing Immunotherapeutic Activity of Agonis-tic Anti-CD40 Antibodies"
* Neal Rosen, MD, PhD, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, "Combinatorial Approaches to Treating Mutant BRAF Melanomas"
* Chris Sander, PhD, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, "Network Models of Signaling Pathways and Combinatorial Therapy in Melanoma"
* Hermann Steller, PhD, Rockefeller University, "Targeting XIAP for the Treatment of Melanoma"
* Kai W. Wucherpfennig, MD, PhD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, "Synergistic Targeting of Inhibitory T cell Pathways in Melanoma"
Academic Industrial Partnership:
* Kim Margolin, MD, University of Washington, "Novel IL-15/IL-15 Receptor-IgFc Complex in Advanced Melanoma Patients"
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