For nearly a decade, Peter C. Adamson, MD served as Chair of the Children's Oncology Group (COG), a National Cancer Institute (NCI) supported international consortium of more than 220 childhood centers that conducts clinical-translational research, including large-scale clinical trials, in children with cancer. After a long and distinguished career in academia, Dr. Adamson recently joined Sanofi, Inc. as Global Head, Oncology Development and Global Head, Pediatric Innovation. Dr. Adamson is Professor Emeritus at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. He is Board Certified in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology and Clinical Pharmacology. Dr. Adamson was appointed by President Obama and serves on the National Cancer Advisory Board (NCAB) and has served as a member of the Blue Ribbon Panel for Vice President Biden's National Cancer Moonshot Initiative. Prior to becoming Chair of the COG in 2011, Dr. Adamson was Director for Clinical and Translational Research at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, as well as Chief of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. Other past roles include being co-Director of the University of Pennsylvania's - CHOP Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA), Program Director of the General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) and Principal Investigator of CHOP's Pediatric Pharmacology Research Unit (PPRU).

Dan Bastian is Vice-President and co-founder of Progressive O&P, Inc., since its incorporation in 1999. Dan has been an American Board Certified Prosthetist since 1996; he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Marist College in 1987.

In 1980, at the age of 15, he was diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma in his right leg. After countless unsuccessful surgeries to repair the damaged bone and musculature, in 1990 Dan made the decision to have his right leg amputated six inches below his hip. He has walked with a prosthesis ever since. While working as a System Programmer for IBM, Dan volunteered at Memorial Sloane Kettering, spending time with pediatric patients about to undergo amputation and sharing pictures of himself skiing and other activities to reassure them that an active life wasn’t over after limb loss.

This experience motivated him to return to school and earn a degree in Prosthetics. Over twenty years ago Dan, along with his business partner, Sal Martella, opened Progressive O&P, a successful clinical practice providing compassionate care for adults, children, and veterans needing prosthetic and orthotic solutions.

As a Certified Prosthetist (CP), Dan has dedicated his career to helping patients living with limb loss. He is a member of the Amputee Coalition of America, the American Academy of Orthotists and Prosthetists, the National Amputee Golf Association (life member), and the Disabled Sports Association and former Board member of the National Association for the Advancement of Orthotics and Prosthetics (NAAOP). Dan lives with his family Massapequa.

Dr. Boxer obtained her veterinary degree from the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine. After graduation, Dr. Boxer practiced equine medicine in an ambulatory practice in California before joining FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Boxer has been with CVM for 14 years as a Veterinary Medical Officer in the Office of New Animal Drug Evaluation. Dr. Boxer leads the Center in developing regulatory and review policy for animal cells, tissues, and cell- or tissue-based products, as well as conducting educational outreach. In her current role, she is the Team Leader for the Cell and Tissue Products Team in the Division of Animal Bioengineering and Cellular Therapies.

Dr. Jeffrey Bryan earned a Bachelor of Science degree in veterinary science from the University of California - Davis in 1991. He received his D.V.M. from the University of California - Davis in 1993. He worked as an Associate Veterinarian from 1993-1995 and served as Medical Director from 1995-2002 of the Irving Street Veterinary Hospital in San Francisco, CA. Bryan then completed a medical oncology residency, a Masters of Biomedical Sciences, and a PhD in Pathobiology at the University of Missouri. He received certification by the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine in Oncology 2005. He is the Director of the Tom and Betty Scott Endowed Program in Veterinary Oncology, the Director of PET Imaging Center of the University of Missouri, NextGen Precision Health Faculty Research Lead for Cancer Research, and the Associate Director of Comparative Oncology for Ellis Fischel Cancer Center. Dr. Bryan’s research focuses on comparative examination of cancers in companion animals to better understand cancers in all species. His particular areas of interest are targeted imaging and therapy, epigenetics, and immunotherapy of cancers. He directs the PET Imaging Center, which seeks to develop novel PET imaging agents for cancer diagnosis, localization, and prognostication. He studies DNA methylation of canine non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He studies immunotherapy in companion dogs including investigating fetal microchimerism.

Dr. Carter serves as the president and chief executive officer for TVAX Biomedical, a novel cancer immunotherapy company focused on brain cancer and several difficult to treat cancers. He joined TVAX in 2019 and also serves as a member of the Board of Directors. Prior to that, he served as the president and CEO of BioNexus KC leading the transformation of the Kansas City region into a nationally recognized center of excellence in human and animal health research, development and commercialization. Dr. Carter has more than 18 years of Fortune 500 experience in pharmaceutical and nutrition R&D. In his role at Pfizer as executive director of Global Clinical Technologies, he accelerated the development of many drugs using novel clinical technologies. His board appointments include Acenxion, MRI Global, University of Kansas Center for Research, and the One Health Commission. Dr. Carter received his BS, DVM, and PhD in Immunology from Purdue University.

As a veterinarian and neurosurgeon, Dr. Chambers is a strong proponent of the One Health Initiative, an effort to improve animal and public health worldwide and strengthen medicine by working together. She is the founder of the Alabama Comparative Oncology Network, principal investigator of the Southeastern Comparative Oncology Network, and founding member of the Comparative Brain Tumor Consortium at the Center for Cancer Research, NIH National Cancer Institute - each a collaboration of veterinary and medical scientists and clinicians working together to identify genetic targets for treatment of disease through comparative genomics. Dr. Chambers is the principal investigator of the "CANINE" immunotherapy trial, a collaboration between neuroscientists and clinicians at UAB and regional colleges of veterinary medicine funded by the NIH as part of the Cancer Moonshot Initiative to support cancer research. The research is aimed at identifying histopathologic and genetic similarities and evaluating novel therapies of brain tumors in both people and pets.

Having spent his childhood in the company of a wide variety of animals, Dr. Eward fulfilled a lifelong dream of becoming a small animal veterinarian in 2000 when he graduated from Auburn University's College of Veterinary Medicine. He was particularly captivated by his patients with cancer and decided to pursue this interest further. In 2002, he returned to school, receiving an MD degree from the University of Vermont. He currently is on faculty at Duke University with an adjunct appointment at the North Carolina State College of Veterinary Medicine. He spends the first part of the week taking care of humans with cancer and the latter part of the week taking care of animals with cancer. As an Orthopaedic Oncologist, he specializes in preserving and reconstructing limbs that have been jeopardized by a type of cancer called Sarcoma. Given his dual roles in human and animal health, Dr. Eward is committed to using a One Medicine approach to solving the terrible problem that cancer presents to all of us, whether we walk on two legs or four. He runs a lab at Duke that attempts to identify common elements between types of cancer across different species.

Dr. Henry was named Dean of the University of Missouri (MU) College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) in February 2018 after serving as Interim Dean for six months. She is a tenured Full Professor with dual appointments at the CVM and the School of Medicine. She earned her DVM at Auburn University (1990) and practiced small animal and emergency medicine before completing an oncology residency/MS (DACVIM ’94). Henry served on the faculty at Washington State University from 1993 to 1997 before accepting a position at MU in 1997 to develop the oncology service. She is past president of both the Veterinary Cancer Society and the ACVIM Specialty of Oncology. Henry has served as the Mizzou Advantage One Health Facilitator (2010), Associate Director of Research for Ellis Fischel Cancer Center (2011) and Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies at the CVM (2013). Her research interests include canine bladder, bone, and mammary cancer and comparative oncology/cancer epidemiology.

Alex Y. Huang, MD, PhD is a tenured Professor of Pediatrics, Pathology, Biomedical Engineering and General Medical Sciences at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He holds the Theresia G. & Stuart F. Kline Family Foundation Chair in Pediatric Oncology and serves as Director of the Pediatric Hematology-Oncology Fellowship Program at UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital and the Angie Fowler Adolescent & Young Adult Cancer Institute. Prior to his faculty appointment, Dr. Huang received combined B.S. & M.S. from University of Chicago, Medical Scientist Training Program (M.D./Ph.D.) from Johns Hopkins University, pediatric residency training at Johns Hopkins, Pediatric Hematology/Oncology fellowship at Johns Hopkins / NCI, and a postdoctoral fellowship at NIAID. Dr. Huang oversees immune cell-based and molecular-based therapeutic development as leader of Cancer Immunology Initiative and co-leader of the Hematopoiesis & Immune Cancer Biology Scientific Program at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Huang serves on several scientific advisory committees including St. Baldrick’s Foundation, and as a member of the Cancer Immunotherapy & Preventing Working Group of the Cancer Moonshot Initiative Blue Ribbon Panel. Dr. Huang is an elected steering committee member of the Coalition for Pediatric Medical Research, and a member of the Children’s Oncology Group’s Bone Tumor Committee as well as the Osteosarcoma New Agent Task Force. Dr. Huang’s research focuses on fundamental cellular and molecular immunology, and in vivo onco-immunology, in areas such as tumor-associated macrophages, tumor-intrinsic immune checkpoint regulation, APC-T cell interaction and immune cellular trafficking using intravital two-photon microscopy.

Dr. Patterson-Kane received her veterinary degree and PhD from Massey University, New Zealand. She completed specialty training in the field of veterinary anatomic pathology at the University of Florida followed by the University of Kentucky, before becoming board-certified in 1999. Dr. Patterson-Kane was a faculty member at the Royal Veterinary College (University of London), and then the University of Queensland (Australia), before holding the Chair in Veterinary Pathology at the University of Glasgow (United Kingdom). After leaving academia in 2014 she worked in private diagnostics and the biotechnology industry before joining the Morris Animal foundation as Chief Scientific Officer in 2019.

Dr. Patterson-Kane’s research interests are broad, including cellular stress and ageing, and cancer pathology. She is co-author of the only currently available equine oncology textbook, ‘Clinical Equine Oncology’.

Brief Faculty Profile - Dr. Lee is Professor of Pediatrics and DiMarco Family Endowed Chair in Cell Based Therapy at Nationwide Children's Hospital. He is the founding Director of the Cellular Therapy and Cancer Immunotherapy Program, a joint program between NCH and The Ohio State University James Cancer Hospital. Dr. Lee conducts clinical and translational research on natural killer (NK) cells and their potential for cancer immunotherapy. His laboratory identified a crucial role for IL-21 and STAT3 signaling in NK cell function and proliferation, which has enabled a method for large-scale propagation of clinical-grade NK cells for adoptive transfer. NK cells expanded with this approach have been infused into adult and pediatric patients with leukemia, brain tumors, and solid tumors in investigator-initiated Phase I trials. Dr. Lee is chair of the Cellular Therapy Strategy Group for the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Consortium, member of the NIH Novel and Exceptional Technology and Research Advisory Committee and member of the Cell Therapy Steering Committee of the Children's Oncology Group. His work in cancer immunotherapy and cellular therapy has been supported by NIH, DOD and numerous foundation research grants, and has led to over 100 peer-reviewed publications, patents, and commercial licenses. Dr. Lee practices clinically in the area of bone marrow transplantation, with a particular interest in haplotransplantation and cellular therapy.

Our translational research program focuses on a comparative approach, utilizing immunologically intact, canine patients with spontaneous cancer. This comparative approach provides a unique opportunity to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of next generation immunotherapies in a parallel canine patient population that presents the same challenges to effective immunotherapy as seen in human patients. The aim of this approach is to accelerate the translation of the most promising pre-clinical discoveries into the human clinic. Our lab is actively involved in developing the canine "model" for evaluating CART cell therapies. We have successfully translated several promising strategies to generate anti-tumor immunity from the lab and pre-clinical murine models into client owned dogs suffering from lymphoma, osteosarcoma and hemangiosarcoma. Our lab evaluates the immunological consequences of immune-based therapies in client owned dogs using flow cytometric phenotyping and functional assays including cytokine production, cytotoxicity assays and ELISpot assays to investigate canine T cell responses. Dr. Mason leads a multi-institutional clinical trial evaluating the safety and efficacy of a recombinant Listeria to prevent metastatic disease in dogs with osteosarcoma. She also leads the coordinating center for Canine Cancer Immunotherapy Trials (U24) as part of the Cancer Moonshot program. The lab has extensive experience in methodology to robustly expand and genetically modify canine T cells ex vivo and is the first to perform clinical trials using CART cells in client owned dogs with treatment naïve or relapsed B-NHL. This single site trial is performed at the Veterinary Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

John Otridge has a PhD in Molecular Biology and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at NHGRI but left the laboratory behind in 2000 and joined Celera Genomics. Since then, John has worked in professional software development and service delivery for the life science community (clinical, diagnostics and research). In 2015 Dr. Otridge joined the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (operated by Leidos Biomedical Research) as a Technical Project Manager managing a diverse range of NCI sponsored projects and in July 2017 he became Director of Program Management for the Center for Technical and Operations Support (CTOS) group within the Biomedical Informatics and Data Science Directorate. His team have many projects underway for NCI and NIAID, with a large focus on developing and supporting NCI’s Cancer Research Data Commons which contains the Integrated Canine Data Commons.

Dr. Rodney Page, Director of the Flint Animal Cancer Center Professor and Director of the Flint Animal Cancer Center Stephen Withrow Presidential Chair in Oncology College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences Colorado State University Dr. Page received his DVM from Colorado State University and completed specialty training in the field of medical oncology in NYC. Dr. Page is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Oncology. He was a faculty member at North Carolina State University prior to his appointment at Cornell University as the founding director of The Sprecher Institute for Comparative Cancer Research. In 2005 Dr. Page was appointed Chair of the Department of Clinical Sciences. Dr. Page returned to Colorado as the Director of the Flint Animal Cancer Center in 2010 (www.csuanimalcancercenter.org ). Dr. Page has authored or co-authored about 130 peer-reviewed manuscripts, 30 book chapters and co-edited the 5th Edition of Withrow & MacEwen's Small Animal Clinical Oncology in 2012. Dr. Page's research interests have recently been focused on a 'One Medicine' approach to cancer. He has served as PI of the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study since 2008 and has initiated a national effort to bring translational and comparative oncology to a greater audience.

Gregory Reaman is the Associate Director for Pediatric Oncology in the FDA's Oncology Center of Excellence, Office of the Commissioner and Associate Director for Pediatric Oncology in the Office of Oncologic Diseases, CDER. He is the Executive Director emeritus of the Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders and senior attending physician at Children's National, Washington, D.C.. He has held numerous leadership positions in clinical trial groups and professional organizations. He was the Inaugural Chair of the Children's Oncology Group and previously served as the Associate Chair for New Agent Studies and Vice Chair for Scientific Affairs of the Children's Cancer Group. He served on the national Board of Directors of the American Cancer Society and chaired its Task Force on Cancer in Children and on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the International Society of Pediatric Oncology. He was the first pediatrician member of the FDA's Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee and the first chair of its Pediatric Subcommittee. He is a professor of pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. His research interests are in the immunobiology and therapy of acute leukemia and the development of new cancer therapeutics for children. He has authored more than 330 peer-reviewed publications.

Elias Sayour, MD, PhD is an Associate Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics and Principal Investigator of the RNA-Engineering Lab at the University of Florida. He is a NIH-funded investigator who functions as the Director of the Pediatric Cancer Immunotherapy Initiative (PCI2) of the UF Health Cancer Center and Vice Chair of the UFHCC Scientific Review Monitoring Committee. As a board-certified pediatrician and oncologist, Dr. Sayour has extensive translational experience as PI/Co-I on several human trials. His translational efforts are also focused on new pipeline technologies including a novel lipid-nanoparticle (NP) formulation that his team has pioneered for the immunologic treatment of cancer currently being tested in canine (pet dog) patients with terminal brain cancer before translation into dedicated human studies.​

Dr. Schiffman is the CEO and Co-Founder of PEEL Therapeutics, delivering evolution-inspired medicine to patients (*PEEL = Hebrew word for elephant). Dr. Schiffman also co-founded ItRunsInMyFamily.com, an online family history collection tool. Dr. Schiffman is a Professor of Pediatrics and Investigator at Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah and the previous Medical Director for the Family Cancer Assessment Clinic. Dr. Schiffman graduated from the Brown University School of Medicine in 2000, followed by clinical training in Pediatrics and Pediatric Hematology-Oncology at Stanford University from 2000-2008. His academic research and now commercial efforts focus on evolutionary solutions to disease, like cancer resistance in elephants and anti-inflammatory molecules in newborns. Dr. Schiffman’s continues to be very interested in comparative oncology – specifically what dogs can teach us about cancer risk and how new therapeutics can help both dogs and human patients.

Dr. Connie Sommers is a Program Director at the ImmunoOncology Branch in the Developmental Therapeutics Program in the Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis in the National Cancer Institute. Her grant portfolio covers all aspects of immuno-oncology including immune checkpoint therapies, adoptive cell therapies, combination therapies, and multiple preclinical model systems including canines. She has co-organized conferences on adverse events of immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy, cell-based therapies for the treatment of solid tumors, and combination radiation therapy and immunotherapy . Her research background is in breast cancer and T cell immunology.

Dr. Jeffrey M. Trent is President and Research Director of the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix, Arizona.

Prior to forming TGen in 2002, Dr. Trent served for 10 years as the Scientific Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Under his guidance, NHGRI's Division of Intramural Research became an internationally recognized research center in human genetics.

Dr. Trent's research has provided important insights into the genetic basis of cancer. He is the author of more than 400 manuscripts in the scientific literature, numerous book chapters, invited reviews, and has given hundreds of invited lectures. He has received numerous honors and awards, and has sat on the editorial boards of a dozen scientific publications. He specializes in developing and integrating novel "omic" technologies, supporting studies of molecular changes related to cancer risk and progression. He continues to participate in studies of other complex diseases in humans, and alongside Drs. Will Hendricks and Matt Huentelman is a leader of TGen's canine hereditary cancer program.

Dr. Trent's previous faculty positions included: The University of Arizona, where he was Deputy Director and Director for Basic Science of the Arizona Comprehensive Cancer Center; the University of Michigan, where he held the E. Maisel Endowed Professorship in Cancer Genetics, Professor of Human Genetics and Radiation Oncology, Head of the Cancer Biology Division of the Department of Radiation Oncology, and Deputy Director and Director of Basic Research for the Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. He also is a Diplomat of the American College of Medical Genetics.

Work in Dr. Trent's laboratory focuses on the study of genetic changes related to cancer predisposition and progression. He has worked the majority of his career on melanoma, recently serving as the Co-Principal Investigator with Dr. Patricia LoRusso, Yale University of the Stand Up to Cancer/Melanoma Research Alliance Melanoma Dream Team. The focus on that project was using molecularly-guided therapy for patients with BRAF wild-type (BRAFwt) metastatic melanoma. In addition to continuing work on germline genetic alterations associated with melanoma risk, his laboratory, in concert with Dr. Hendricks’, has been among the most active in identifying and understanding the somatic changes associated with canine melanoma. The canine is a critically important model of human disease, and in the case of melanoma the clear clinical association to the human is for the largely understudied mucosal melanomas.

Other work in his laboratory has been focused upon relating the recent advances in both molecular biology and cancer genetics of ovarian cancer. Specifically, he was one of the leaders of an international consortium which recently identified that Small Cell Carcinoma of the Ovary, hypercalcemic type, (SCCOHT) displays frequent inactivating germline and somatic mutations in SMARCA4. SCCOHT is an extremely rare, aggressive cancer affecting children and young women (average age of diagnosis 23yo compared to 63yo for the common epithelial ovarian cancers). Working with investigators at TGen (Will Hendricks), Mayo Clinic (Alex Sekulic), University of British Columbia (David Huntsman) and University of North Carolina (Buddy Weissman) they identified germline and somatic inactivating mutations in this SWI/SNF chromatin-remodeling gene in nearly all SCCOHT. The genetic changes lead to SMARCA4 protein loss in >95% of SCCOHT tumors but in only 0.4% (2/485) of other primary ovarian tumors. Work is underway to understand how this pathognomonic implicate SMARCA4 in SCCOHT oncogenesis.

Andrea Webber received her PhD in molecular biology from Princeton University and went on to a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine before joining Merck & Co., Inc. Over the course of her pharmaceutical career, she has worked in biomarker discovery and development in support of both Discovery and Clinical Research. Currently, she is Assistant Head of Clinical Biomarkers in Merck’s Translational Oncology department, providing a key link between the Translational Sciences and Merck’s Clinical Development teams. The Translational Oncology Biomarkers Team supports early- and late-stage development and leverages multiple assays and platforms to inform on Keytruda monotherapy and combination therapies. Specifically, Dr Webber leads the biomarker strategy for multiple product development teams including Melanoma, Head and Neck, and Liver cancers.