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Cyrus Ghajar, PhD 


Professor
Public Health Sciences Division/Translational Research Program

Director
Center for Metastasis Research Excellence (MET-X)
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

Seattle, WA (USA)

Cyrus Ghajar, PhD is a Professor within the Translational Research Program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, where he holds the Peter S. Lefkarites Memorial Endowed Chair.

At the Hutch, he directs the Laboratory for the Study of Metastatic Microenvironments, which aims to understand how tissue microenvironments regulate the phenotype of disseminated tumor cells (DTCs). Specifically, his laboratory is working to understand how niches throughout the body influence the survival, growth, therapeutic resistance and immune surveillance of DTCs, and how local and systemic changes impact their colonization potential. His ultimate goal is to translate findings from his laboratory to prevent metastasis in patients.

More recently, Professor Ghajar was appointed as the founding director of the Center for Metastasis Research eXcellence (MET-X) at the Hutch. The mission of this new Center is the creation of financial and intellectual infrastructure necessary for the conduct of innovative, interdisciplinary research aimed at curing Stage IV/metastatic disease.

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Elaine Fuchs, PhD 


Investigator
Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor
HHMI, The Rockefeller University

New York, USA

Elaine Fuchs is renowned for her research in skin biology, its stem cells and associated disorders, including cancers and inflammation, and has published >370 manuscripts. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton, postdoctorate at MIT, and has been faculty at University of Chicago and now Rockefeller University, where she is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Her awards include the National Medal of Science, L’Oreal-UNESCO Award, International Society for Stem Cell Research Innovation Award, the Gairdner International Award and most recently the Benjamin Franklin Medal. Fuchs holds membership in the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, American Philosophical Society, Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society and she has received honorary degrees from a number of institutions including Harvard University.  Fuchs’ current research in cancer is on squamous cell carcinomas, with a focus on how tissue stem cells that acquire an oncogenic RAS mutation alter their communication with their microenvironment to set them on a path to cancer. Her team uses mice as a model to unearth mechanisms that pertain to human cancers.

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Shannon Turley, PhD


Genentech

San Francisco, California, USA

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Laurence Zitvogel, MD, PhD 


Director
Clinicobiome, Gustave Roussy Cancer Center (GRCC)

Research Director
U1015 INSERM

Scientific Co-Director
Center of Clinical Investigations Biotheris, GRCC

Full Professor,
PU-PH -University Paris Saclay

Paris, France

Prof. L. Zitvogel, MD (Clinical Oncology), PhD (Tumor Immunology), full professor at the University Paris Saclay, graduated in Medical Oncology in 1992. Scientific career first at the University of Pittsburgh, US. Became Research Director at Institut National de la Santé et Recherche Médicale U1015, and Scientific Director of the Clinicobiome program at Gustave Roussy, the largest cancer Center in Europe in 1998. Actively contributed to the field of cancer immunology and immunotherapy. Pioneer of the concepts of immunogenic cell death and gut microbiota in cancer immunosurveillance and therapies. Recipient of many awards: Translation Research INSERM Prize, the ASCO-SITC, Brupbacher Awards 2017, ESMO Immuno-Oncology Award 2017, Baillet Latour Prize 2019, the Griffuel Prize 2019, the Duquesne Ligue Prize, and ITOC9 german award. Knighted Officer of Légion d’Honneur by the French Ministry of Health 2019 and elected member of the National Academy of Medicine 2021. Her H-factor is 145, with >500 publications on PubMed, 108 265 citations in Clarivate analytics (highly cited researchers 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016). 

Amanda W. Lund, PhD


Associate Professor
Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology
NYU Grossman School of Medicine

New York, USA

Amanda W. Lund, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology and Department of Pathology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and is a Member of the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone Health. She received a PhD in Biology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York (2009), and completed Postdoctoral training in cancer immunology with Dr. Melody A. Swartz at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. Dr. Lund’s work established the paradigm that tumor-associated lymphatic vessel remodeling plays a role in regulating anti-tumor immunity where lymphatic vessels are both necessary for adaptive immune priming and also contribute to multiple mechanisms of immune resolution and tumor immune escape.

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