Scholar Tamar Berger, MD, PhD, and Mentors William Kaelin Jr., MD, and Rameen Beroukhim, MD, PhD

‍Tamar Berger, MD, PhD, attended Stanford University, where she conducted research in Alzheimer's disease. She completed her MD/PhD training at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA, where she studied protein misfolding in the context of polyglutamine repeat disorders. Berger completed a Neurology residency at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, followed by a Neuro-Oncology fellowship with the Dana-Farber/Mass General Brigham Fellowship program, and she is currently an Instructor in Neurology at Harvard Medical School and at Dana-Farber's Department of Medical Oncology. Berger performs research in the laboratories of Rameen Beroukhim, MD, PhD, andWilliam G. Kaelin Jr., MD, where she is studying genetic vulnerabilities associated with truncal chromosomal alterations in glioblastoma.

‍William G. Kaelin Jr., MD, is a 2019 Nobel Prize recipient in Medicine or Physiology. He received his MD from Duke University in1982 and was a house officer and chief resident in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Kaelin was a Medical Oncology Clinical Fellow at Dana-Farber and a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of David Livingston, MD, where he began his studies of tumor suppressor proteins. He became an independent investigator at Dana-Farber in 1992, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in 2002. The 2019 Nobel was awarded jointly to Kaelin, Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, and Gregg L. Semenza for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.

‍Rameen Beroukhim, MD, PhD, is a practicing neuro-oncologist whose research focus is to understand tumor evolution, with emphases on brain tumors and alterations in chromosome structure. This work spans computational methods development, genomic studies of human cancers, and experiments in model systems. In early work describing integrated genomic profiling of glioblastomas, he developed the Genomic Identification ofSignificant Targets In Cancer (GISTIC) method that is now widely used to analyze copy-number changes across a range of cancers. He has also contributed to the development of several other genomic analysis methods and has led integrated genomic profiling efforts in multiple cancer types, including pan-cancer analyses across thousands of tumors. This work has identified novel mechanisms by which cancers develop and progress, and novel cancer dependencies that have spurred the development of new cancer therapeutics.

Scholar Elizabeth Carstens, MD, and Mentors Eric Smith, MD, PhD, and Steven Carr, PhD

Elizabeth Carstens, MD, earned a BS in Bioengineering from Rice University. She attended the University of Texas Southwestern for her MD, given with Distinction in Research for work she completed at the National Institutes of Health designing complement targeting antibodies. She then completed residency in Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and now is a Dana- Farber Medical Oncology fellow specializing in care of patients receiving cellular immunotherapies. Her scientific interest is in developing nucleic acid-based immunotherapies for hematologic and solid malignancies.

Eric Smith, MD, PhD, is Director of Translational Research for Immune Effector Cell Therapies at Dana-Farber; Principal Investigator of a pre-clinical laboratory; and Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School. He received his MD/PhD and internal medicine training at Mount Sinai School of Medicine/Hospital, and medical oncology and post-doctoral training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he stayed on as faculty in the Cellular Engineering Center and Myeloma/Cellular Therapy services before being recruited to Dana-Farber in 2020.

The Smith Lab for Gene and Cell Engineering focuses on advancing the field of gene, cellular, and mRNA immunotherapies for both hematologic and solid tumors, and translation of such therapies for the benefit of patients. An example of recent prior work includes the identification of GPRC5D as a target for the immunotherapy of myeloma, and generation and translation of the first GPRC5D-targeted CAR to the clinic (STM 2019; NEJM 2022).

Steven Carr, PhD, is Senior Director of Proteomics at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University and an Institute Scientist. He is internationally recognized as a leader in the development and application of proteomic technologies. In collaboration with scientists in the Broad Institute community, nationwide and internationally, Carr and his group address compelling questions in biology, chemistry, and medicine. Research developments from his lab include novel methods for cell, tissue, and biofluid processing, peptide separation and acquisition, and deepscale, quantitative analysis of proteins and a wide array of their modifications by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry as well as non-MS based approaches such as proximity ligation. Carr's laboratory also develops novel informatics pipelines for peptide and protein assignment and integration with genomic data.

Scholar Annie Hsieh, MD, PhD, and Mentors Marcia Haigis, PhD, and Bernardo Sabatini, MD, PhD

Annie Hsieh, MD, PhD, is a physician-scientist in the Neuro-Oncology fellowship of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital. She obtained her MD from the Tzu Chi University in Taiwan and her PhD in Pathobiology from Johns Hopkins University under the mentorship of Dr. Chi V. Dang, where she co-discovered that the MYC oncogene could disrupt the circadian molecular clock, contributing to aberrant metabolism and cell growth. She also collaborated with neuroscientist Dr. Amita Sehgal and discovered that both upregulation and downregulation of Drosophila Myc affect circadian behavior and metabolism in fruit flies. Subsequently, she completed her Neurology residency at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, where she organized the first Neuro-Oncology tumor board. Currently, as a neuro-oncology fellow, she takes care of brain tumor patients at Mass General and conducts her research in the laboratories of Bernardo Sabatini, MD, PhD, and Marcia Haigis, PhD, at the Harvard Medical School with support from the National Cancer Institute K12 program. Her research focuses on utilizing unbiased genomic CRISPR screen to identify novel regulators for glioma growth and investigating the metabolic regulations at the neuron-glioma synapses. Her goal is to have her own laboratory in the future to investigate how glioma takes advantage of the brain microenvironment and hijacks the metabolic pathways originally wired to produce neurotransmitters at the synapse.

Marcia Haigis, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Cell Biology, co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging Research, and the Director of Gender Equity for Faculty in Science at Harvard Medical School. She obtained her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin and performed postdoctoral studies at MIT studying mitochondrial metabolism. Haigis is an active member of the Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and the Ludwig Center at Harvard Medical School. Her research has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of how mitochondria contribute to human health and diseases of aging. Her studies identified that mitochondria mediate metabolic reprogramming in cancer, including identifying nodes of metabolic vulnerability in cancer, as well as identifying metabolic recycling of ammonia to generate amino acids important for tumor growth. Her work has shed light on our understanding of how diet and obesity regulate anti-tumor immunity. She is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Brookdale Leadership in Aging Award, the Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar Award, the American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award, the National Academy of Medicine Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine Program, and the 2023 Samsung Ho-Am Prize in Medicine.

Bernardo Sabatini, MD, PhD, is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He earned his MD and PhD from Harvard Medical School and the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. Sabatini's research examines the mechanisms by which animals choose what to do next. This process of “action selection” uses information from past experiences, current goals, internal needs, and the current state of the environment to choose an action that achieves near- and long-term objectives, such as access to food, water, mates, and safety from predators. To facilitate their studies of the basal ganglia, the Sabatini group develops novel optical, behavioral, and mathematical methods.

Scholar Nolan Priedigkeit, MD, PhD, and Mentor Todd Golub, MD

Nolan Priedigkeit, MD, PhD, attended the University of Oregon for his undergraduate studies and received an MD/PhD from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. His thesis applied translational genomics to discover and functionally characterize acquired molecular dependencies in advanced breast cancers. He completed an Internal Medicine residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital and is currently a Medical Oncology Fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Clinically, he sees patients with breast cancer with a particular focus on those afflicted with metastatic disease. His research aims to merge computational and genomic sciences with technology development to make an impact on how we understand and treat advanced cancers.

Todd Golub, MD, is director and a founding core member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Golub is a world leader in using genomics tools to understand the basis of cancer. He also pioneered the development of new cell-based approaches to drug discovery for cancer and other diseases. Golub is also the Charles A. Dana Investigator in Human Cancer Genetics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. He is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Outstanding Achievement Award from the American Association for Cancer Research, the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research, and the Daland Prize from the American Philosophical Society. In 2014 he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

Scholar MacLean Sellars, MD, PhD, and Mentor Cathy Wu, MD

MacLean Sellars, MD, PhD, is interested in developing new therapies for ovarian cancer. He grew up in Southern California and completed his PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of Strasbourg (France). MacLean then pursued post-doctoral research at New York University (NY), where he used T cell differentiation as a model system to understand the epigenetic regulation of cell fate decisions. During this time, a family battle with cancer led MacLean to clinical training with plans to become a physician-scientist. He attended the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (CA), before completing Internal Medicine residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and Medical Oncology fellowship at Dana-Farber. He will be a Medical Oncologist with the Dana-Farber Gynecologic Oncology Division starting in the fall of 2024. His research in the laboratory of Cathy Wu, MD, focuses on identifying novel antigens in ovarian cancer that may be used for T cell-based immune therapies.

Catherine Wu, MD, is a Professor of Medicine and Chief, Division of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapies at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the Association of American Physicians. Wu received her MD from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed her clinical training in Internal Medicine and Hematology-Oncology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Dana-Farber. She joined the staff at Dana-Farber in 2000. At Dana-Farber, she has initiated an integrated program of research and clinical activities that focuses on dissecting the basis of effective anti-tumor immunity. Wu's laboratory has focused on the use of genomics-based approaches to discover immunogenic antigen targets, and to understand the molecular basis of therapeutic response and resistance. She has led early-phase clinical trials to test personalized tumor vaccines in melanoma and glioblastoma.

Scholar Elliott Brea, MD, PhD, and Mentors Eric Smith and David Barbie, MD

Elliott Brea MD, PhD, is focused on developing new cellular therapies for lung cancer. Brea completed his MD and PhD degrees at Weill Cornell Medicine, and went on to complete his Internal Medicine residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is currently a fellow in the Dana-Farber/Mass General Brigham Hematology/Oncology program. With his mentors, Brea is working on developing and translating chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy in difficult-to-treat lung cancers. By focusing on identifying new targets as well as manipulating the tumor microenvironment, they are confident that they can translate their findings into the clinic.

Eric Smith, MD, PhD, is Director of Translational Research for Immune Effector Cell Therapies at Dana-Farber; Principal Investigator of a pre-clinical laboratory; and Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School. He received his MD/PhD and internal medicine training at Mount Sinai School of Medicine/Hospital, and medical oncology and post-doctoral training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he stayed on as faculty in the Cellular Engineering Center and Myeloma/Cellular Therapy services before being recruited to Dana-Farber in 2020.

The Smith Lab for Gene and Cell Engineering focuses on advancing the field of gene, cellular, and mRNA immunotherapies for both hematologic and solid tumors, and translation of such therapies for the benefit of patients. An example of recent prior work includes the identification of GPRC5D as a target for the immunotherapy of myeloma, and generation and translation of the first GPRC5D-targeted CAR to the clinic (STM 2019; NEJM 2022)

David Barbie, MD, is a thoracic medical oncologist in the Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology, Dana-Farber; Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; and Associate Director, Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science. Barbie was Principal Investigator of a multicenter lung cancer clinical trial using this first-generation drug, and his work also led to similar studies in colorectal and pancreatic cancer. Currently, his laboratory is developing ways to co-opt TBK1 signaling to drive an antiviral response that can boost the impact of cancer immunotherapies. As a fellow, he was the recipient of an ASCO Young Investigator award and NIH K08 grant. Since starting his laboratory, he has also received an ASCI Young Physician Scientist Award, and was elected as an ASCI Member in 2019.

Scholar William Gibson, MD, PhD, and Mentor Matthew Meyerson, MD, PhD

William Gibson, MD, PhD, earned degrees in Biological Engineering and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then joined the Harvard-MIT MD/PhD program, where he worked with Rameen Beroukhim on understanding cancer evolution and the therapeutic vulnerabilities of somatic copy number alterations. Gibson completed his residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and is completing his Medical Oncology fellowship at Dana Farber. He performs research in the laboratories of Matthew Meyerson, MD, PhD, and Stuart Schreiber, PhD, where he is using emerging insights from chemical biology to address drug cancer's most intractable drivers, tumor suppressor genes.

Matthew Meyerson, MD, PhD, serves as Charles A. Dana Chair in Human Cancer Genetics at Dana-Farber; Professor of Genetics and Medicine at Harvard Medical School; and an Institute Member of the Cancer Program at the Broad Institute. Meyerson and colleagues have discovered genes and gene alterations important in human cancer, including the cyclin-dependent kinase genes CDK2 and CDK6, the telomerase catalytic subunit gene TERT, somatic mutations in lung cancer in EGFR (with Bill Sellers, MD, Bruce Johnson, MD, and Pasi Jänne, MD, PhD), BRAF, U2AF1, RBM10, HLA genes and others, and copy number alterations including lineage amplifications of NKX2-1 and SOX2 in lung cancers.

The current focus of the Meyerson Laboratory includes somatic alterations in the non-coding cancer genome, the cancer microbiome, and genome-inspired cancer drug discovery. Meyerson has been privileged to mentor a generation of young cancer scientists, among them many wonderful Dana-Farber oncology fellows.

Scholar Alexandria Maurer, MD, PhD, and Mentor Catherine Wu, MD

Alexandria Maurer, MD, PhD, grew up in Oklahoma, then attended the University of Rochester, where she did research in T-cell immunodeficiencies. She completed her MD/PhD training at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine in New York, NY, where she studied host defense mechanisms and infection. Maurer completed an Internal Medicine residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, followed by medical oncology training at the Dana Farber/Mass General Brigham fellowship program, and she is currently an Instructor in Stem Cell Transplantation in Dana Farber's Department of Medical Oncology. Her current research centers on understanding how immune cells from a stem cell transplant donor can eradicate blood cancer cells in patients with leukemia.

Catherine Wu, MD, is a Professor of Medicine and Chief, Division of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapies at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the Association of American Physicians. Wu received her MD from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed her clinical training in Internal Medicine and Hematology-Oncology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Dana-Farber. She joined the staff at Dana-Farber in 2000. At Dana-Farber, she has initiated an integrated program of research and clinical activities that focuses on dissecting the basis of effective anti-tumor immunity. Wu's laboratory has focused on the use of genomics-based approaches to discover immunogenic antigen targets, and to understand the molecular basis of therapeutic response and resistance. She has led early-phase clinical trials to test personalized tumor vaccines in melanoma and glioblastoma.

Scholar Justin Becker, MD, PhD, and Mentor Bradley Bernstein, MD, PhD

Justin Becker, MD, PhD, is a physician-scientist in the hematology/oncology fellowship of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital. Becker completed his MD and PhD degrees at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by a residency in internal medicine at Mass General. As a fellow, he takes care of patients with lung cancer at Mass General and conducts laboratory research at Dana-Farber under the mentorship of Bradley Bernstein, MD, PhD. Becker's research focuses on particular stretches of the human genome, derived from viruses, that may play a critical role in how the immune system fights cancer. He hopes that his work may inform the development of a new class of therapies for melanoma, lung cancer, and other malignancies.

Bradley Bernstein, MD, PhD, is Chair of Cancer Biology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where he holds the Richard and Nancy Lubin Family Chair. He is also Director of the Gene Regulation Observatory at the Broad Institute, a Professor of Cell Biology and Pathology at Harvard Medical School, and an Investigator in Harvard's Ludwig Institute. He served on the faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital from 2005 to 2021.

Bernstein's research focuses on epigenetic gene regulation in stem cells and cancer. His work has been recognized by an Early Career Scientist Award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the NIH Director's Pioneer Award, an American Cancer Society Professorship, and the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research.

Scholar Cynthia Hahn, MD, PhD, and Mentor Catherine Wu, MD

Cynthia Hahn, MD, PhD, grew up in the small town of Mahomet, Illinois, then came east to attend Amherst College, where she majored in chemistry. She discovered a passion for scientific research and spent three years after graduation working in cancer genomics at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute. She then completed her MD-PhD training at Dartmouth Medical School, studying post-transcriptional mechanisms of fetal hemoglobin induction in β-hemoglobinopathies. Hahn returned to Boston to complete her internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital and is now a Dana-Farber/Mass General Brigham Hematology/Oncology Fellow, specializing in lymphoma. Her current research spans cancer genomics and immunology, focusing on elucidating mechanisms of immune evasion in B-cell malignancies.

Catherine J. Wu, MD, is a Professor of Medicine and Chief, Division of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapies at Dana-Farber. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the Association of American Physicians. Wu received her MD from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed her clinical training in Internal Medicine and Hematology/Oncology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Wu joined the Dana-Farber staff in 2000. At Dana-Farber, she has initiated an integrated program of research and clinical activities that focuses on dissecting the basis of effective anti-tumor immunity. Her laboratory has focused on the use of genomics-based approaches to discover immunogenic antigen targets and to understand the molecular basis of therapeutic response and resistance. She has led early-phase clinical trials to test personalized tumor vaccines in melanoma and glioblastoma.

Scholar Diana Shi, MD, and Mentors William Kaelin Jr., MD, and Daphne Haas-Kogan, MD, MBA

Diana Shi, MD, was born and raised in Morgantown, West Virginia. She attended Princeton University, where her research focused on chemical synthesis of light-sensitive “caged” neurotransmitters. Shi went on to attend Harvard Medical School, where she joined the laboratory of William G. Kaelin Jr., at Dana-Farber as a medical student during a year-long Howard Hughes Medical Research Fellowship. This experience solidified her interest in oncology and led her to pursue clinical training in radiation oncology. Following medical school graduation in 2018, Shi completed a medicine internship at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and she is currently a resident in the Research track of the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program.

William G. Kaelin Jr., MD, is a 2019 Nobel Prize recipient in Medicine or Physiology. He received his MD from Duke University in1982 and was a house officer and chief resident in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Kaelin was a Medical Oncology Clinical Fellow at Dana-Farber and a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of David Livingston, MD, where he began his studies of tumor suppressor proteins. He became an independent investigator at Dana-Farber in 1992, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in 2002. The 2019 Nobel was awarded jointly to Kaelin, Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, and Gregg L. Semenza for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability

Daphne Haas-Kogan, MD, MBA, is Chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Boston Children's Hospital. She is the Willem and Corrie Hees Family Professor of Radiation Oncology at Harvard Medical School. Haas-Kogan received her undergraduate degree in biochemistry and molecular biology magna cum laude from Harvard University and her MD from the University of California, San Francisco, where she was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. She completed her residency in radiation oncology and post-doctoral fellowship in molecular neuro-oncology at UCSF in 1997.

While in medical school, Haas-Kogan received the Henry J. Kaiser Award for Excellence in Teaching at the UCSF School of Medicine, and was nominated for the UCSF Teaching Award for students and trainees. Her dedication to education and mentorship continued as she served at UCSF as Residency Director for eight years and Vice-Chair for Research and Education for nine years. Most recently, Haas-Kogan was awarded the highest mentorship recognition at Dana-Farber as the 2021 recipient of the Edward J. Benz Jr., Award for Advancing the Careers of Women Faculty.

Scholar Jonathan Tsai, MD, PhD, and Mentor Benjamin Ebert, MD, PhD

Jonathan Tsai, MD, PhD, completed his undergraduate at the California Institute of Technology, where he worked in the laboratory of David Baltimore, PhD, on T-cell receptor biology. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, before receiving his MD and PhD from Stanford University. At Stanford, Tsai worked with Irving Weissman, MD, to characterize tissue-specific stem cells and their contributions to fibrosis and regeneration. Tsai completed his Clinical Pathology residency and Molecular Genetics Pathology fellowship at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is currently a post-doctoral researcher at Dana Farber in the laboratory of Benjamin Ebert, MD, PhD, where he is investigating degradation pathways governing nuclear hormone receptors.

‍Benjamin Ebert, MD, PhD, is Chair of Medical Oncology at Dana-Farber, the George P. Canellos, MD, and Jean S. Canellos Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and an Institute Member of the Broad Institute. The Ebert Laboratory focuses on the biology and therapy of hematologic malignancies. The laboratory has elucidated multiple novel mechanisms of targeted protein degradation, beginning with the mechanism of action lenalidomide, a derivative of thalidomide. Additional work has focused on the biology and genetics of myeloid malignancies, including the characterization of clonal hematopoiesis, a pre-malignant state for blood cancers.

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