Thomas D. Brown, MD, MBA, has been named Executive Director of the Swedish Cancer Institute in Seattle. He was most recently Professor of Medicine and Chief Operating Officer of the University of Arizona Cancer Center.
Massimo Cristofanilli, MD, has been appointed Director of the Jefferson Breast Care Center at the Kimmel Cancer Center and Thomas Jefferson University and Hospitals, as well as Deputy Director of Translational Research. He was most recently head of the Inflammatory Breast Cancer Clinic at Fox Chase Cancer Center.
Pierre P. Massion, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine and Cancer Biology at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, is now Director of the Thoracic Program. He has been at Vanderbilt since 2001.
Margo Shoup, MD, has been named Medical Leader of the Cancer Program at Cadence Health and Medical Director of Surgical Oncology for Cadence Physician Group, moving from Loyola University Medical Center, where she was Chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology.
Five clinician-scientists who specialize in leukemia have joined the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center: Mark G. Frattini, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine and Director of Research for the Hematologic Malignancies Section; Mark L. Heaney, MD, PhD, Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine; Joseph Jurcic, MD, Professor of Clinical Medicine and Director of the Hematologic Malignancies Section; Nicole Lamanna, MD, Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine; and Todd Rosenblat, MD, Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine. All were most recently at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
STOP CANCER, a philanthropic organization that funds cancer research, has awarded four City of Hope researchers a total of $475,000 in career development money and seed grants:
* Ching-Cheng Chen, PhD, and Vu Ngo, PhD, both Assistant Professors in the Division of Hematopoietic Stem Cell and Leukemia Research, each received $150,000 Research Career Development Awards for research related to (1) the bone marrow microenvironment and the development of leukemia, and (2) finding lymphoma-specific molecules to develop new targeted therapies, respectively.
* Karen Aboody, MD, Associate Professor in the Department of Neurosciences, received a $25,000 Smalley Family Isadore Familian Memorial Seed Grant to support her work developing a targeted therapy using neural stems cells.
* Marcin Kortylewski, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Cancer Immunotherapeutics and Tumor Immunology, received a $150,000 Allison Tovo-Dwyer Memorial Research Career Development Award to support his work developing immunotherapeutics based on DNA and RNA oligonucleuotides.
Glen J. Weiss, MD, has been named Director of Clinical Research at Cancer Treatment Centers of America. He will be based at Western Regional Medical Center in Goodyear, Ariz., and will continue as Clinical Associate Professor, Translational Physician Scientist, and Co-Head of the Lung Cancer Unit of TGen, as well as the Chief Medical Officer of the Cancer Research And Biostatistics (CRAB) Clinical Trials Consortium.
The Melanoma Research Alliance has appointed Louise M. Perkins, PhD, as the first full-time Chief Science Officer. She comes to MRA after having spent five years as CSO at the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. She has also had industry experience, leading oncology research programs at Bayer Pharmaceuticals and Schering-Plough.
Five physicians have joined MD Anderson Cancer Center Orlando: Jeffrey Feiner, MD, in the Breast Care Center; Patrick Kelly, MD, PhD, in the Radiation Oncology Department; Susan Kelly, MD, in the Pediatric Oncology Department; and Mickey Liao, MD, and Dipali Trivedi, MD, in the Hematology/Oncology Department and the Dr. P. Phillips Hospital and Health Central Hospital.
These physicians received Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Physician Awards to advance end-of-life care as a basic part of the doctor-patient relationship:
* Charles G. Sasser, MD, FACP, FAAHPM, Director of Palliative Care Services at Conway Medical Center, the senior physician award, a $25,000 prize.
* Daniel C. Johnson, MD, FAAHPM, the National Physician Lead for Palliative Care at Kaiser Permanente's Care Management Institute, Director of Palliative Care Innovations and Development at Kaiser Permanente-Colorado, and Director of the Life Quality Institute in Denver, a mid-career physician award, a $25,000 prize.
* Drew Rosielle, MD, Program Director for the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, an early-career physician award, a $15,000 prize;
* Jane deLima Thomas, MD, Associate Director of the Harvard Palliative Medicine Fellowship Program at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, an early-career physician award; and
* Alen Voskanian, MD, Regional Medical Director of VITAS Innovative Hospice Care in Torrance, Calif., also an early-career physician award.
The Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation has awarded $640,000 in new research grants, including to:
* Mitchell Cheung, PhD, Research Associate at Fox Chase Cancer Center, for investigating the role of the BAP1 gene and its potential utility when screening for mesothelioma; and
* Valerie Rusch, MD, Vice Chair for Clinical Research in the Department of Surgery, Chief of the Thoracic Service, and the Miner Family Chair in Intrathoracic Cancers, for establishing a new standard for clinicians to classify the stages of mesothelioma to better optimize treatment options.
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