Scientific Advisory Board

Jose Baselga, MD

is the Chairman of the Medical Oncology Service and Director of the Division of Medical Oncology, Hematology and Radiation Oncology at the Vall d'Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain and a Professor of Medicine at the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona. He has made significant contributions to the clinical development of several approved targeted cancer therapies, including trastuzumab, cetuximab, gefitinib and erlotinib. Dr. Baselga also is actively engaged in research and development of new classes of cancer therapies, such as ras farnesyltransferase inhibitors, m-TOR inhibitors and a variety of antiangiogenic agents. In addition to his academic responsibilities, Dr. Baselga also is a member of the Editorial Boards for Cancer Cell, Clinical Cancer Research and Investigational New Drugs. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles, in addition to over 300 abstracts and book chapters. He holds leadership positions in a number of cancer research organizations, including Scientific Chairman of the Spanish Breast Cancer cooperative group (SOLTI), Member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR) and is the President-Elect of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO). Dr. Baselga received his M.D. degree from the Universidad Autonoma of Barcelona in 1982. He performed internal medicine residencies at Vall d'Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona and at State University of New York. He completed a fellowship in Medical Oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, subsequently joining the institution's staff.

Ronald M. Evans, PhD

is an authority on the role of hormones in health and disease. A major achievement in Dr. Evans' lab was the discovery of a large family of receptors that respond to various steroid hormones, Vitamin A and thyroid hormones, which play essential roles in the body's normal function and provide targets for therapeutic intervention in a variety of diseases. Receptors in this class are targets for treating cancer, osteoporosis, asthma and other significant diseases. Dr. Evans' discoveries have helped to advance the understanding and treatment of the many problems that arise from excess weight and obesity, such as adult onset diabetes (Type II diabetes). He received his B.A. in Bacteriology from UCLA, his PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from UCLA, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. He has received a variety of awards and honors, including the 2004 Lasker Medical Research Award in Basic Research.

Frank McCormick, PhD, FRS

is currently focusing his research efforts on identifying the fundamental differences between normal and cancer cells, and leveraging these differences to develop novel therapies based on naturally occurring and engineered viruses. Dr. McCormick is the author of more than 234 scientific publications. In addition to his position as director of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Cancer Center, he holds the David A. Wood Chair of Tumor Biology and Cancer Research in UCSF's Department of Microbiology and Immunology. He received his BS. in biochemistry from the University of Birmingham and his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge. He completed postdoctoral fellowships at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London. He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1996. Prior to joining the UCSF faculty, Dr. McCormick pursued cancer-related work with several Bay Area biotechnology firms. He was a founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Charles Sawyers, PhD, MD

has made critical contributions to elucidating the role of the BCR-ABL tyrosine kinase in chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). He was a primary participant in the design and conduct of clinical trials of the ABL tyrosine kinase inhibitor imatinib (Gleevec), and his lab was the first to identify mechanisms of drug resistance due to Bcr-Abl gene mutation. More recently he led preclinical and clinical studies of the novel Abl kinase inhibitor BMS-354825, which shows promise in CML patients with imatinib resistance. Dr. Sawyers has also conducted molecular biological investigations into the roles of hormones and kinase pathways in the progression and treatment of cancer. Dr. Sawyers received his BS from Princeton University and his MD from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the UCSF Medical Center, and a clinical fellowship in Hematology/Oncology and a post-doctoral fellowship in Molecular Biology at the UCLA School of Medicine. Dr. Sawyers has won numerous honors and awards from highly regarded organizations, most recently the Karnofsky Memorial Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology. He is the Peter Bing Professor at the UCLA School of Medicine and is on the Board of Directors of the American Association of Cancer Research.