Carlos L. Arteaga, M.D., was appointed Director of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center and Associate Dean of Oncology Programs at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas in September 2017. Previously, he was the Associate Director for Clinical Research, director of the Center for Cancer Targeted Therapies, and professor of Cancer Biology and Medicine at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. [1] In 2014–2015, he was the president of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Arteaga earned his medical degree from the Universidad de Guayaquil in Ecuador in 1980, where his father was the dean of medicine. [2] He came to the United States intending to specialize in cardiology after his internal medicine residency at Emory University, but changed course and instead did a fellowship in hematology-oncology at University of Texas Health Science Center.
Arteaga joined the faculty at Vanderbilt in 1989 and since 2002, has directed the NCI-funded Vanderbilt Breast Cancer Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE).
Arteaga is recognized as an expert in the field of breast cancer research. He has demonstrated the utility of targeting TGF-β, which causes cancer to spread, metastasize, and become resistant to chemotherapeutic drugs. [3] He was involved in the development of trastuzumab in combination with chemotherapy for patients with HER2-mutated cancer. [4] Among his current research areas is triple-negative breast cancer, for which there are no targeted therapy options. [5]
He is a principal investigator for the Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) "Targeting the PI3K Pathway in Women's Cancers" Dream Team, which provides $15 million is research funding for a research team spread across 7 institutions. [6]
Josep Baselga i Torres, known in Spanish as José Baselga, was a Spanish medical oncologist and researcher focused on the development of novel molecular targeted agents, with a special emphasis in breast cancer. Through his career he was associated with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology, and the Massachusetts General Hospital in their hematology and oncology divisions. He led the development of the breast cancer treatment Herceptin, a monoclonal antibody, that targets the HER2 protein, which is impacted in aggressive breast cancers.
Charles L. Sawyers is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator who holds the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Chair of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program (HOPP) at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). HOPP is a program created in 2006 that comprises researchers from many disciplines to bridge clinical and laboratory discoveries.
Olufunmilayo I. Olopade born in the year 1957, is a Nigerian hematology oncologist, Associate Dean for Global Health and Walter L. Palmer, Distinguished Service Professor in Medicine and Human Genetics at the University of Chicago. She also serves as director of the University of Chicago Hospital's Cancer Risk Clinic.
John Mendelsohn was a president of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He was an internationally recognized leader in cancer research.
Waun Ki Hong was Professor of Medicine at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where he served as chairman of the Department of Thoracic/Head & Neck Medical Oncology from 1993 to 2005 and as head of the Division of Cancer Medicine from 2001 to 2014. He was also an American Cancer Society Professor and the Samsung Distinguished University Chair in Cancer Medicine emeritus.
William G. Kaelin Jr. is an American Nobel laureate physician-scientist. He is a professor of medicine at Harvard University and the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute. His laboratory studies tumor suppressor proteins. In 2016, Kaelin received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the AACR Princess Takamatsu Award. He also won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2019 along with Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza.
Nancy E. Davidson is the executive director and president of Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, senior vice president, director of clinical oncology at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and head of the Division of Medical Oncology at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She focuses her research on breast cancer treatments and the genes that are mutated in various forms of breast cancer. She was president of American Association for Cancer Research from 2015 to 2016 and president of American Society of Clinical Oncology from 2007 to 2008.
Gordon B. Mills is the Wayne and Julie Drinkward Endowed Chair in Precision Oncology, Director of Precision Oncology, Director of SMMART Trials and Professor in Cell, Development and Cancer Biology in the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University.
Bruce Allan Chabner is an American medical oncologist and researcher who worked at the National Cancer Institute and now is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is also the director of clinical research at the Cancer Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. His expansive research of cancer pharmacology most notably includes his contributions to developing anti-folate drugs for the treatment of cancer. His work at NIH led to the development of Taxol, a commonly prescribed breast cancer drug.
Elizabeth M. Jaffee is an American oncologist specializing in pancreatic cancer and immunotherapy.
Harold L. Moses is the Ingram Professor of Cancer Research, Professor of Cancer Biology, Medicine and Pathology, and director emeritus at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. He was president of the American Association for Cancer Research in 1991.
Judy Ellen Garber is the director of the Center for Cancer Genetics and Prevention at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Garber previously served as president of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Kornelia Polyak is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an internationally recognized breast cancer expert.
Roy S. Herbst is an American oncologist who is the Ensign Professor of Medicine, Professor of Pharmacology, Chief of Medical Oncology, and Associate Director for Translational Research at Yale Cancer Center and Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.
Levi A. Garraway is an American oncologist. His research team was among the first to adapt genomics technologies to enable scalable, high-throughput clinical approaches to cancer gene mutation profiling. As a result, he was inducted into the American Society for Clinical Investigation, American Association for Cancer Research, and National Academy of Medicine.
Chi Van Dang is a hematological oncologist and researcher, currently serving as the Scientific Director of Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. He is known for his research on genetics, the MYC gene and the cellular energy metabolism of cancer.
Philip Greenberg is a professor of medicine, oncology, and immunology at the University of Washington and head of program in immunology at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. His research is centered around T cell biology and therapeutic cell therapies. He is a co-founder of Juno Therapeutics.
Richard B. Gaynor is an American physician specializing in hematology-oncology, educator, drug developer, and business executive. He served as an Associate Professor of Medicine at UCLA School of Medicine for nearly a decade, and subsequently as an endowed Professor of Medicine and Microbiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School prior to joining the pharmaceutical industry in 2002. His research on NF-κB, IκB kinase, and other mechanisms regulating viral and cellular gene expression has been covered in leading subject reviews. He has been a top executive at several pharmaceutical companies, with respect to the development and clinical testing of novel anticancer drugs and cell therapies. For over a decade and a half, he worked at Eli Lilly and Company, where he became the Senior Vice President of Oncology Clinical Development and Medical Affairs in 2013. Gaynor was President of R&D at Neon Therapeutics from 2016 to 2020, when he became the President of BioNTech US, both pharmaceutical companies headquartered in Cambridge, MA. His honors include being elected a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians.
W. Kimryn Rathmell is an American physician-scientist whose work focuses on the research and treatment of patients with kidney cancers. She is the 17th Director of the National Cancer Institute, having previously served as the Hugh Jackson Morgan Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), and Physician-in-Chief for Vanderbilt University Adult Hospital and Clinics in Nashville, Tennessee. On November 17, 2023, Rathmell was nominated by President Biden as the next Director of the National Cancer Institute and she assumed office on December 18, 2023.
Raymond N. DuBois is an American academic and scientist. He is the incumbent director of the Hollings Cancer Center at the Medical University of South Carolina and executive chairman of the board of the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research. He was the president of the American Association for Cancer Research between 2008 and 2009.