Mitesh J. Borad, MD
Dr. Borad is currently a Professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science. He also serves as the Director of the GI Cancer Cellular, Gene and Virus Therapy lab, Director of the Liver and Biliary Cancer Research Program and Co-Director, Precision Cancer Therapeutics Program at the Center for Individualized Medicine at Mayo Clinic. Dr. Borad concurrently serves on the National Cancer Institute’s Hepatobiliary Task Force, an appointment he has held since 2011. Prior to joining Mayo Clinic, he spent three years as a Drug Development Scholar/Genomics Medicine Scholar at the Translational Genomic Research Institute, where he worked closely with world-renowned experts, including Dr. Daniel D. Von Hoff.
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He earned his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering (summa cum laude) from Boston University and his M.D. from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Subsequently, Dr. Borad obtained his internal medical training at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and completed his Medical Oncology Fellowship at Tulane University School of Medicine.
Dr. Borad holds a Certification in Medical Oncology from the American Board of Internal Medicine and is a member of more than 20 professional organizations and committees, including presently being seated as Chairman of the International Cholangiocarcinoma Research Network. Dr. Borad has a long and distinguished list of accolades and accomplishments, such as earning a 2014 New Innovator Award from the National Institute of Health and being named 2011 Paul Calabresi Scholar in Clinical-Translational Research by Mayo Clinic.
Robert A. Lustig, MD
Dr. Robert Lustig is a professor of clinical radiation oncology and director of clinical operations in the department of radiation oncology at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and is affiliated with multiple hospitals in the area, including Pennsylvania Hospital and Penn Presbyterian Hospital
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He received his medical degree from Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University and then completed a residency in radiation oncology at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. He has been in practice for more than 20 years and specializes in the treatment of adult and pediatric brain tumors.
Chad Tang, MD
Dr Chad Tang received his MD from Stanford University and underwent residency training in radiation oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is a board-certified radiation oncologist and an assistant professor in the department of radiation oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He holds joint appointments in the departments of investigational cancer therapeutics (phase I program) and translational molecular pathology.
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His research interests are in the treatment of metastatic patients with radiation and the combination of radiation and investigational pharmaceutics. He is the principal investigator on numerous clinical trials investigating radiation for metastatic disease all with emphases on translational correlatives.
Cullen M. Taniguchi, MD, PhD
Dr. Taniguchi is an Associate Professor at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, with a joint appointment in Radiation Oncology and Experimental Radiation Oncology. He is a physician scientist specializing in gastrointestinal malignancies, with a clinical and research focus on pancreatic cancer. His laboratory studies hypoxia biology in the context of the tumor microenvironment and regenerative medicine to improve the therapeutic ratio of therapies for pancreatic cancer.
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For instance, the Taniguchi laboratory discovered that a key regulatory enzyme of hypoxia, the EGLN prolyl hydroxylases can reduce radiation toxicity sufficiently to enable higher, and potentially ablative doses of radiation to tumors when surgery is not possible. Dr. Taniguchi is the lead PI of a multicenter Phase I/II trial that tested this concept in the clinic (NCT03340974), using a superoxide dismutase mimetic, GC4419, which closed after meeting its endpoints in May 2020. Together, these studies rely on knowledge of both normal tissue niches and tumor biology to develop and translate novel pancreatic cancer therapeutics.
Timothy Yap, MBBS, PhD, FRCP
Dr. Yap is an Associate Professor in the departments for Investigational Cancer Therapeutics and Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is also the Medical Director of the Institute for Applied Cancer Science, a drug discovery biopharmaceutical unit where drug discovery and clinical translation are seamlessly integrated. He is also an Associate Director of Translational Research at the Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy, an integrated research and clinical trials program. Previously, Dr. Yap was a Consultant Medical Oncologist at The Royal Marsden Hospital in London, UK and National Institute for Health Research BRC Clinician Scientist at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK.
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Dr. Yap´s primary research focuses on development of targeted agents and their acceleration through biomarker-driven clinical trials. His main interests include targeting of the DNA damage response as well as the development of novel immunotherapeutics, and past and current he is and/or has been a Principal Investigator for multiple clinical trials evaluating novel strategies for targeting the DNA damage response in cancer. Dr. Yap obtained his B.Sc. degree in Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Imperial College London, UK, and subsequently went on to attain his medical degree from Imperial College London, UK. He has a Ph.D. in Molecular Pharmacology from the Division of Cancer Therapeutics at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK.