OSUCCC – JAMES GRAND ROUNDS

The 2013-14 Grand Rounds lecture series sponsored by the OSUCCC – James will continue with a presentation on Friday, April 18, at 8 a.m. in 518 James (breakfast available at 7:45 a.m.). Below are biosketches for upcoming presenters.

APRIL 18 – Maura Gillison, MD, PhD, a professor of Medicine, Epidemiology and Otolaryngology at Ohio State, where she also holds the Jeg Coughlin Chair of Cancer Research, will present “HPV and the Genomics of Head and Neck Cancer” at the April 18 Grand Rounds at 8 a.m. in 518 James. Recruited to Ohio State in 2009 from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Dr. Gillison is a head and neck medical oncologist and molecular epidemiologist. Her laboratory at Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James) focuses on the role of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection in head and neck malignancies. Her work ranges from cohort studies of oral HPV infection to genetic indicators of response to chemoradiotherapy. She has made important research contributions to the fields of tumor virology, cancer biology and epidemiology. In 2000, she was part of the team that first demonstrated that some head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) are HPV-positive, and that HPV is the causative agent of a subset of head and neck cancer. She has also characterized the HPV types and tissue localizations of the virus. Her findings have extended previous molecular and epidemiological studies and demonstrated that HPV-positive HNSCCs are a distinct disease at the molecular level that is causally associated with high-risk HPV subtypes.

Dr. Gillison is supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and has published extensively in such prestigious journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Journal of the National Cancer Institute and Journal of Clinical Oncology. Her lab collaborates with the Centers for Disease Control, the NCI and the International Agency for Research on Cancer. She has received the Clinical Investigator Award from the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Institute, is a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and received the Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Award from the American Association for Cancer Research in 2012.

Dr. Gillison earned her MD in 1991 from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, then served successively as a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, as a medical resident at Massachusetts General Hospital, and as a clinical fellow and later as a senior clinical fellow in oncology at Johns Hopkins before earning her PhD from that University’s School of Hygiene and Public Health in 2001.

MAY 2 – PELOTONIA IDEA GRANT PRESENTATIONS

Qianben Wang, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, and a member of the Molecular Carcinogenesis and Chemoprevention Program at the OSUCCC – James, will present “Looking Beyond Androgen Receptor Signaling in the Treatment of Advanced Prostate Cancer.” Wang’s lab team studies molecular pathological mechanisms underlying the development and progression of prostate cancer. His Idea Grant team’s research objective is to develop therapies to for hormone-independent prostate cancer by targeting specific gene pathways.
 

Amanda Toland, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Molecular Virology, Immunology and Medical Genetics, and a member of the Molecular Biology and Cancer Genetics Program at the OSUCCC – James, will present “Genomic Aberrations Driving Metastatic Cutaneous SCC.” Toland, who has a joint appointment in the Department of Internal Medicine’s Division of Human Genetics, and her research lab focus on the search for human tumor susceptibility genes. Her Idea Grant team’s research objective is to identify genomic changes that cause a type of skin cancer called squamous cell carcinoma to metastasize, and to develop therapies for these aggressive tumors.

Patrick Green, PhD, a professor and associate dean for research and graduate studies in the College of Veterinary Medicine, and a member of the Leukemia Research Program at the OSUCCC – James, will present “Role of PRMT5 Enzyme Overexpression in HTLV-1-Driven Cellular Transformation and Leukemia.” Green also directs the Center for Retrovirus Research. His lab studies the molecular basis of T-lymphocyte transformation and induction of leukemia/lymphoma and neurological disease by the human T-cell leukemia viruses (HTLVs). Green’s Idea Grant team’s research objective is to develop a therapeutic approach to treating an aggressive adult T-cell leukemia (ATL) by studying a specific cellular protein and testing a new class of drugs in a mouse model of human ATL.

MAY 16 – Warren Kibbe, PhD, director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology (CBIIT) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), will present “Genomic Medicine and Cancer – An Informatics Perspective” at the May 16 Grand Rounds in 518 James. Dr. Kibbe became director of the CBIIT in October 2013. Under his leadership, the center engages in the cancer informatics and overall cancer community to accelerate the application of innovative solutions in cancer treatment, prevention, research and informatics. According to the NCI website, the CBIIT supports terminologies, common data elements and case report form development, works with patient advocates to better understand the needs of cancer patients and survivors, works with the community to identify sustainable methods for integrating molecular medicine and public data (e.g., the NCI Cloud Pilots, the Cancer Genomics Data Commons, MATCH, MPACT), and works with the community to identify, validate and apply innovative methods for using social media in cancer education, evaluation and cancer risk reduction.

Before joining the NCI, Dr. Kibbe spent more than 20 years at Northwestern University, where he most recently was a professor of health and biomedical informatics in the Feinberg School of Medicine, and director of cancer informatics and CIO for the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Kibbe received his PhD in chemistry from Caltech and was a visiting scientist at the Max Plank Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany, before joining the faculty at Northwestern. He was named a Top 25 Innovative Healthcare CIO for 2012 by InformationWeek.