Mount Sinai

Miriam Merad, MD, PhD

Director, Precision Immunology Institute; Director, Mount Sinai Human Immune Monitoring Center, Icahn School of Medicine

Miriam Merad, MD, PhD, is the Mount Sinai Endowed professor in Cancer Immunology and the Director of the Precision Immunology Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Dr. Merad also co-leads the Cancer Immunology program at The Mount Sinai Tisch Cancer Institute and is the Director of the Mount Sinai Human Immune Monitoring Center (HIMC). Dr. Merad obtained her MD at the University of Algiers, Algeria. She did her residency in Hematology and Oncology in Paris, France and obtained her PhD in Immunology in collaboration between Stanford University and University of Paris VII. She was recruited to Mount Sinai in 2004 and was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with Tenure in 2007 and to Full Professor in 2010 and obtained an Endowed Chair in Cancer Immunology in 2014.

Dr. Merad’s laboratory made seminal discoveries to our understanding of the mechanisms that control the development and functional identity of tissue resident dendritic cells and macrophages during homeostasis, and examining how these regulations are changed in cancer and inflammatory diseases.

The overarching goal of her laboratory is to identify dysregulated pathways in macrophages and dendritic cells that can be harnessed to treat Cancer using both genetically engineered mouse models and human lesions to address these questions. To expand the understanding of immune cells contribution to human lesions, she founded in 2009, the human immune monitoring center at Mount Sinaito implement technology platforms to maximize information obtained from limited biological samples. In 2016, she took the leadership of the Precision Immunology Institute at the icahn School of Medicine (PrIISM) to continue to lead initiatives to enhance human immunology science. PrIISM integrates immunological research programs across 42 laboratories with synergistic expertise in biology, medicine, technology, physics, mathematics and computational biology which come together to frame novel questions to understand the contribution of immune cells to disease initiation, progression and response to treatment, to implement cutting edge technologies andto develop novel immunotherapy strategies for the treatment of human diseases.

Dr. Merad has authored more than 170 primary papers and reviews in high profile journals. She receives generous funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for her research on innate immunity and their contribution to human disease, and belongs to several NIH consortia. In 2018, Dr. Merad received the prestigious William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Tumor Immunology.

University of Pennsylvania

E. John Wherry, PhD

Chair, Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics; Director, Institute for Immunology, Perelman School of Medicine

Dr. E. John Wherry is currently the Chair, Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics, Richard and Barbara Schiffrin President’s Distinguished Professor and Director, Institute for Immunology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Wherry received his BS from Pennsylvania State University in 1993, and his PhD in Immunology from Thomas Jefferson University in 2000.

Dr. Wherry’s expertise focuses pioneering work to define the cellular and molecular nature of Immune Exhaustion – or failure of normal immune system function – in chronic infection and cancer. His lab studies T cell exhaustion in chronic infections and cancer and on the mechanisms by which immunoregulatory “checkpoint” pathways such as PD-1 control T cell exhaustion. Dr. Wherry’s work has defined the molecular mechanisms of T cell exhaustion, including defining the role of inhibitory receptor biology, transcriptional control and regulation of T cell differentiation. This work has helped define key principles about inhibitory receptor blockade and co-blockade to reverse T cell exhaustion (e.g. coblockade of PD-1 and LAG3, etc). Work on combination treatment to reverse exhaustion is now being extended to include other complementary approaches such as radiation and other “orthogonal” treatments. Moreover, Dr. Wherry’s work has defined central transcriptional pathways including those controlled by Blimp-1, T-bet and Eomes in the biology of exhausted T cells. Major efforts continue in transcriptional profiling, genomics and computational biology and multiparameter flow cytometry to understand the nature and reversibility of T cell exhaustion in preclinical and clinical settings.

University of California, San Francisco

Frank McCormick, PhD, FRS, DSc (Hon)

Professor, Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center; Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology

Frank McCormick, PhD, FRS, is Professor of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. Prior to joining the UCSF faculty, Dr. McCormick pursued cancer-related work with several Bay Area biotechnology firms and held positions with Cetus Corporation (Director of Molecular Biology, 1981-1990; Vice President of Research, 1990-1991) and Chiron Corporation, where he was Vice President of Research from 1991 to 1992. In 1992 he founded Onyx Pharmaceuticals, a company dedicated to developing new cancer therapies, and served as its Chief Scientific Officer until 1996. At Onyx Pharmaceuticals, he initiated and led drug discovery efforts that led to the approval of Sorafenib in 2005 for treatment of renal cell cancer, and for liver cancer in 2007, and the approval of ONYX-015 in 2006 in China for treatment of nasopharyngeal cancer. Sorafenib is being tested in multiple indications worldwide. In addition, Dr. McCormick’s group led to the identification of a CDK4 kinase inhibitor. Dr. McCormick’s current research interests center on the fundamental differences between normal and cancer cells that can allow the discovery of novel therapeutic strategies.

Dr. McCormick holds the David A. Wood Chair of Tumor Biology and Cancer Research at UCSF. Dr. McCormick is the author of over 285 scientific publications and holds 20 issued patents. He also served as President, 2012-2013 for the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). More recently, he has taken a leadership role at the Frederick National Lab for Cancer Research, overseeing an NCI supported national effort to develop therapies against Ras-driven cancers. These cancers include most pancreatic cancers, and many colorectal and lung cancers, and are amongst the most difficult cancers to treat.

Stanford University

Howard Chang, MD, PhD

Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Research and Professor of Genetics

Dr. Howard Chang, PhD is a physician-scientist trained in genome science. His research has focuses on mechanisms that coordinate the activities of large number of genes in cell fate control. He has made series of discoveries that introduced the important and pervasive roles of long noncoding RNAs in biological regulation. His group has substantial experience in epigenetics and RNA biology, including invention of new methods for epigenomic profiling, map RNA occupancy on chromatin, and define RNA structures genome-wide. Hi group has pioneered methods to identify key regulators of large-scale transcriptional programs; these methods have been highly fruitful for studies of development, cancer, and aging. The long term goal of Dr. Chang’s laboratory is to decipher the regulatory information in the human genome for disease diagnosis and therapy.