Are We Winning the War on Cancer?

Tuesday, December 17, 2024
4:30 – 6:30 p.m. CST

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RFU Moderator

Michael S. Rosen, MBA
Managing Director, Innovation and Research Park and Helix 51 Incubator

RFU Presenter

Valerie Chai, PhD
Director, Center for Genetic Diseases; Professor

Dr. Chai, a PhD graduate in microbiology from Cornell University, completed postdoctoral research at UT Southwestern Medical Center, where she studied telomere structure and replication in cancer and aging. In 2008, she founded a laboratory at Washington State University focused on genome stability, eventually achieving tenure before relocating to Loyola University Chicago as a tenured full professor in cancer biology. She is now the director of the Center for Genetic Diseases at Rosalind Franklin University. Her research explores how disruptions in DNA replication impact genome stability, focusing on mutations that contribute to cancer and other diseases. Her lab was the first to demonstrate the CST protein complex’s role in stabilizing stalled replication forks, and she is currently investigating mechanisms by which cancer cells evade damage from chemotherapy.

RFU Panelist

Erin N. Howe, PhD
Assistant Professor, Center for Proteomics and Molecular Therapeutics
Center for Cancer Cell Biology, Immunology and Infection

Dr. Howe earned her PhD in cancer biology from the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus. She completed graduate and postdoctoral fellowships sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Cancer Institute (NCI) under the competitive NIH National Research Service Award (NRSA) at the University of Notre Dame and Harper Cancer Research Institute. She was recently awarded a $100,000 grant from the Mary Kay Ash Foundation as a part of a $1.2 million research funding initiative aimed at advancing cures for women-related cancers. The new grant will help fund her study, “Rab11 family interacting proteins control immune recognition of brain cancer metastases.”

Industry Panelists

Halla S. Nimeri, MD
Chief Development Officer of Oncology
Tempus

Dr. Halla Nimeiri serves as the chief development officer of oncology at Tempus. Prior to Tempus, she held clinical development positions at Foundation Medicine and AbbVie. Dr. Nimeiri is a dedicated oncologist. She brings expertise in clinical trial design, drug development, and precision oncology. Dr. Nimeiri is an active academic clinician at Feinberg School of Medicine, where she provided transformative patient care for more than 10 years. Dr. Nimeiri earned her dual fellowship in hematology/oncology from The University of Chicago.

Gary B. Gordon, MD
President
Global Coalition for Adaptive Research

Dr. Gordon is an accomplished pharmaceutical executive and strategic business leader with extensive experience in the development of drugs from first in-human studies to approval and commercialization. Prior to joining the Global Coalition for Adaptive Research, Dr. Gordon served as vice president of the Oncology Department at AbbVie, where he oversaw the development of AbbVie’s oncology projects. He played a critical role in the oncology business expansion, leading to AbbVie’s current position in oncology. This includes the approval of venetoclax, several major acquisitions and other collaborations.

Paul Weiss, PhD
Managing Director
Venture Investors Health Fund

Dr. Weiss is a managing director at Venture Investors Health Fund in Madison, Wisconsin. With more than 20 years of experience in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, he specializes in investments in biopharma, diagnostics, and devices, particularly where these sectors overlap. Paul serves on the boards of Invenra, Iterion Therapeutics, FluGen, and Madison Vaccines, and he has been involved in several successful ventures, including Neurovance (sold to Otsuka for up to $1 billion), Aerpio Pharmaceuticals, Akebia Therapeutics, and Tissue Regeneration Systems. Before joining Venture Investors, Dr. Weiss was president of the Gala Biotech business unit at Cardinal Health (now part of Catalent Pharma Solutions), after leading the acquisition of Gala Design, Inc. He also held key roles as vice president of business development at 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals, which was acquired by Johnson & Johnson, and director of licensing at Wyeth-Ayerst, now part of Pfizer.