cadrg-tacpad (Speaker Bios)

Jennifer M. Bailey-Lundberg, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, where she serves as Director of the Solid Tumor Cancer Immunology Section and is a member of the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center. Her research focuses on the development of immunoprevention strategies for pancreatic cancer through modulation of the tumor immune microenvironment.

Dr. Bailey-Lundberg leads translational research programs investigating the adenosine signaling pathway as a therapeutic target for pancreatic cancer prevention. Her laboratory is evaluating CD73 and the adenosine A2A and A2B receptors through NCI PREVENT contracts to define their roles in pancreatic carcinogenesis and to advance novel prevention agents toward clinical translation. By integrating genetically engineered mouse models, spatial immune profiling, and mechanistic studies, her team seeks to identify interventions that interrupt disease initiation before invasive cancer develops.

At the NCI Translational Advances in Cancer Prevention and Agent Development (TACPAD) Meeting, Dr. Bailey-Lundberg will discuss emerging evidence supporting adenosine pathway inhibition as a cancer prevention strategy. Her presentation will highlight ongoing studies targeting CD73 and A2A/A2B receptors, key preclinical findings, and opportunities to translate these approaches into preventive interventions for individuals at high risk of pancreatic cancer.

Professor Sarah Blagden is a medical oncologist and clinician–scientist at the University of Oxford with more than 20 years’ experience in clinical and laboratory cancer research. She trained in medicine in London, completed a PhD at the University of Cambridge, and undertook specialist oncology training at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, the Royal Marsden Hospital, and the Drug Development Unit at the Institute of Cancer Research. From 2017 to 2021, she led the Early Phase Clinical Trials Unit at Oxford and currently directs Oxford’s Oncology Clinical Trials Office (OCTO), the UK’s first trials unit dedicated to Precision-Prevention and Early Detection (PPED) studies. Professor Blagden’s expertise lies in the design and delivery of innovative and complex clinical trials, including their methodological and regulatory aspects, exemplified by studies such as the Metformin in Li-Fraumeni (MILI) trial. Her laboratory research focuses on RNA biology, specifically post-transcriptional mechanisms of gene regulation in tumorigenesis. She leads Oxford’s GO-Precise initiative, a collaborative programme with industry partners aimed at translating precancer antigen discovery into cancer prevention vaccines; the first clinical study arising from this work, LungVax, is scheduled to open in June 2026.

Michael Buszczak received his Ph.D. from Yale University under the mentorship of Dr. Lynn Cooley and completed postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Allan Spradling at the Carnegie Institution for Science. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and serves as Associate Director of the Hamon Center for Regenerative Science and Medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Dr. Buszczak’s laboratory has a long-standing interest in understanding how ribosome biogenesis and mRNA translation influence development and disease. His group has developed several innovative tools, including the Ribo-SNAP platform, which enables researchers to monitor ongoing ribosome biogenesis at single-cell resolution in living human cells. This work has revealed that ribosome biogenesis and the global regulation of protein synthesis play critical roles in cell differentiation, growth, and proliferation across a range of biological contexts, from the Drosophila germline to human brain development and cancer.

Building on these discoveries, his laboratory is currently working to identify small-molecule inhibitors of ribosome production as potential strategies for cancer prevention and treatment.

Nick completed his Bachelor of Science with majors in Immunology and Pathology at The University of Melbourne. He then completed an honors year in the laboratory of Dr. Dale Godfrey (The University of Melbourne) studying NKT cell development, and a PhD in the laboratories of Dr. Frank Carbone and Dr. Thomas Gebhardt (The University of Melbourne) investigating circulating and tissue-resident memory T cell responses in skin. After graduating, Nick joined the laboratory of Dr. Yasmine Belkaid at the National Institutes of Health for his postdoctoral fellowship. There, he studied the impact of nutrition on immune responses. The main focus was to develop a mechanistic understanding of how the host adapts to dietary restriction to support and optimize immunological memory, a line of research he is extending in his independent laboratory at Weill Cornell Medical College. Ultimately, Nick aims to harness the impact of nutrition on the immune system in the design of novel vaccination strategies and cancer immunotherapies. Further, he aims to use this information to design rational nutritional intervention strategies that optimize immunity to prevent and treat disease.

Dr. Curiel is a Professor of Medicine, the Inaugural Chair of the Department of Dermatology at the University of Arizona (UA), the Co-Director of the UA Skin Cancer Institute, and the former Interim Director of Research for the UA Comprehensive Cancer Center. She also serves as MPI on two NIH UG3/UH3 Team Science Awards – one funded by NCI and the other by NIDA – spanning biomarker discovery to novel imaging modalities.

Dr. Curiel completed medical school at the Central University of Venezuela, followed by two research fellowships in photobiology and immunobiology of the skin at the Wellman Laboratories of Photomedicine (MGH/Harvard Medical School) and the Ludwig-Boltzmann Institute (University of Münster, Germany), respectively. She subsequently completed her dermatology residency and a skin cancer fellowship through the combined Boston University/Tufts program.
Dr. Curiel served as Co-Director of the Cutaneous Oncology Program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston for several years before joining UA, where she led the establishment of the UACC Skin Cancer Institute and the multidisciplinary Cutaneous Oncology Program.

Her research focuses on addressing critical clinical gaps in skin cancer prevention, early detection, and immunotherapeutics through multidisciplinary translational research. Her interests include photobiology, skin carcinogenesis, immunoprevention and chemoprevention, early skin cancer detection through novel imaging modalities, and biomarker discovery. She has led numerous clinical trials and translational studies, including projects with the UA NCI/DCP Cancer Immunoprevention and Chemoprevention Consortium Networks. She also has extensive expertise in regulatory science, including FDA IND and 510(k) submissions.
In addition, she has mentored numerous trainees in the field of skin cancer research and serves as an MPI of the T32 Integrative Cancer Scholars Program at UACC. She was named Arizona Bioscientist of the Year in 2018 for her impactful contributions to translational skin cancer research at the state, national, and international levels.

Dr. Desai’s research focuses on advancing cancer management through the identification and repurposing of therapeutic and chemopreventive agents, combined with the development of smart nanotechnology-based drug delivery systems for targeted and selective drug delivery. Her work encompasses both cancer prevention and treatment, with an emphasis on improving therapeutic efficacy, minimizing systemic toxicity, and enhancing patient outcomes. Her laboratory has established a strong record of innovation and scientific productivity, reflected in numerous peer-reviewed publications, scientific presentations, extramural research grants, book chapters, awards, and three granted patents. The goal of her translational research efforts is to develop and clinically translate safe, effective, and patient-centered strategies for cancer prevention and treatment.

Dr. James R. Goldenring is presently the Paul Sanger Professor of Surgery and Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Co-Director of the Vanderbilt Epithelial Biology Center. Dr. Goldenring has been a leader in the field of epithelial biology for the past three decades. His studies have led to insights into how vesicle trafficking regulates the establishment of apical membranes specializations and establishes epithelial polarity. Dr. Goldenring has made major contributions to the study of pre-neoplastic changes related to gastric cancer and the roles of mucosal stem cells in giving rise to metaplasia and cancer. He first described Spasmolytic Polypeptide-expressing Metaplasia (SPEM) in mouse models and humans in 1999. While those initial studies were controversial, work over the past 10 years has now established the validity of the concept that SPEM is present in many rodent models of parietal cell loss and in humans. His work has also redefined concepts of the origin of metaplasia and altered views of the plasticity of differentiated cells by demonstrating, using lineage mapping techniques, that SPEM arises from transdifferentiation of mature chief cells into mucous cell metaplasia. All of these studies have led to a major change in the paradigm for gastric preneoplasia to recognize a pathway from transdifferentiation of chief cells into SPEM in the presence of parietal cell loss to further progression of metaplasia into incomplete intestinal metaplasia under the influence of inflammatory mediators. In addition, his most recent studies have indicated that precancer is driven by activation of Ras. He aahs recently completed studies indicating that treating patients with extensive intestinal metaplasia with a two course of MEK inhibitor can lead to return of corpus parietal cells and reductions in metaplasia.

Dr. Seema Ahsan Khan is Professor of Surgery at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and is trained in Surgical Oncology. Her clinical practice at the Lynn Sage Comprehensive Breast Center includes the surgical therapy of women with breast cancer, and the evaluation and management of women at high risk for breast cancer. She has had an interest in the surgical management of women with stage IV breast cancer, and chaired the ECOG2108 randomized trial addressing this question. She also has an active research program in breast cancer risk biomarkers and prevention, and is PI of the Northwestern Cancer Prevention Consortium. This is funded by the Division of Cancer Prevention of the NCI, and conducts early-phase trials in cancer prevention at all organ sites.

Dr. Khan’s current research is focused on the development of novel agents for breast cancer prevention, and on transdermal drug delivery to the breast through the breast skin so as to avoid or reduce the systemic effects associated with oral drug administration. She has also conducted studies on breast cancer risk biomarkers in breast tissue, and on minimally invasive techniques of obtaining breast samples for biomarker research.

The McGuire Lab studies the antibody response to natural infection with viral pathogens of public health importance. The goal is to obtain a high-level understanding of protective antibody responses to viral antigens and to use this information to design and test safe and effective vaccines. My research has mainly focused Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) with active programs in HIV-1, KSHV, HCMV and RSV. My lab has also made substantial contributions to understanding the antibody response to infection and vaccination early in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Gary A. Piazza received a Ph.D. in pharmacology from UAB and postdoctoral training at Fox Chase Cancer Center and Brown University. Dr. Piazza began his research path in the pharmaceutical sector to advance a cancer chemopreventive drug candidate into clinical trials for individuals at risk of developing colorectal cancer. He was the first to report that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) inhibit colon tumorigenesis through a cyclooxygenase-independent mechanism involving the induction of apoptosis. After leaving the industry, Dr. Piazza returned to academic research, focusing on chemical biology and high-throughput screening. His initial appointment was at Southern Research, where he served as the program director for an NIH-funded molecular libraries screening center. In 2011, Dr. Piazza became a professor at the University of South Alabama. In 2021, Dr. Piazza joined Auburn University as an endowed professor and the Head of the Department of Drug Discovery and Development in the Harrison College of Pharmacy. He now serves as the Director of the Cancer Center within the college and leads a multidisciplinary team of scientists focused on experimental therapeutics.

Dr. Piazza has had a long-term research interest in studying the mechanism underlying the antineoplastic activity of the NSAID, sulindac. By chemically modifying sulindac to block cyclooxygenase-inhibitory activity while enhancing target selectivity, his research group discovered a novel class of anticancer drugs that selectively induce apoptosis in cancer cells by suppressing the RAS and Wnt/β-catenin pathways. His research has been continuously funded by the NIH/NCI after leaving industry in 2004. Dr. Piazza has over 160 publications with a h-index of 59. He is an inventor on numerous patents and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He co-founded a startup company, ADT Pharmaceuticals, LLC, aimed at advancing a novel class of RAS inhibitors to clinical trials.

Dr. Chinthalapally V. Rao, is Kerley-Cade Endowed Chair in Cancer Research, and George Lynn Cross Professor of Medicine, in Medical Oncology Section, and Director of the Center for Cancer Prevention and Cancer Drug Development (CCPDD) at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC) and Senior Director at the Stephenson Cancer Center (SCC). Dr. Rao holds the appointments at the Graduate School (Professor), Department of Pathology & Pharmaceutical Sciences (Adjunct Professor).
Research Focus: Molecular and Preclinical Approaches to Clinical Prevention of Colorectal and other Aero-digestive Tract Cancers: Research in my lab is focused on cancer prevention with major goal to design and develop efficacious strategies for clinical prevention of colorectal cancer and other aero-digestive tract cancers. Current efforts focus on identifying optimal molecular targets for chemopreventive drug and vaccine development and understanding the molecular mechanisms involved in the pathology of colorectal, pancreas and lung cancers.

Alexander G. Raufi, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and a gastrointestinal oncologist at the Brown University Health Cancer Institute. He serves as Director of Clinical Research for the Division of Gastrointestinal Oncology and Director of the GI Cancer Translational Research Disease Group. His research focuses on mechanism-informed therapeutic strategies, translational biomarkers, and cancer prevention. His laboratory and translational work has evaluated immunomodulatory and targeted approaches, including imipridones, TRAIL induction, MEK/autophagy inhibition, CXCR4-directed therapy, and antibody-drug conjugates. He has developed and led investigator-initiated clinical trials across gastrointestinal malignancies, with a particular focus on pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, KRAS-mutated cancers, and colorectal cancer prevention. He currently serves as protocol principal investigator of an NCI-supported multicenter Phase I colorectal cancer chemoprevention trial of ONC201 and has received research support from the NCI Division of Cancer Prevention, Brown Physicians Incorporated, the Rhode Island Foundation, the Cancer Center at Brown University, and the Conquer Cancer Foundation/ASCO. His long-term goal is to develop biomarker-driven strategies that improve outcomes across the spectrum of gastrointestinal cancer, from prevention and early interception to treatment of advanced disease.

Dr. Robert Samstein is a distinguished radiation oncologist and physician-scientist dedicated to bridging the gap between basic scientific discovery and clinical cancer care. He currently serves as an Associate Professor within both the Department of Radiation Oncology and Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he leads an independent translational research laboratory.

Dr. Samstein graduated summa cum laude from Yale University before earning his dual MD and PhD degrees through the Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program (Weill Cornell Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and The Rockefeller University). He completed his doctoral work under the mentorship of Dr. Alexander Rudensky, focusing on the foundational development and function of regulatory T cells (Tregs). He later completed his internship and radiation oncology residency at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, conducting advanced laboratory research under the American Board of Radiology Holman Research Pathway in the lab of Dr. Timothy Chan.

As a clinician, Dr. Samstein specializes in radiation oncology with a particular focus on thoracic malignancies, including lung cancer. In the laboratory, his research investigates the complex interplay between the host immune system and tumor microenvironments. The Samstein Laboratory focuses heavily on how DNA damage repair (DDR) and response pathways dictate a tumor's immunogenicity, aiming to identify novel strategies to overcome immunotherapy resistance and expand the efficacy of checkpoint inhibitors. More recently, the lab has developed a focus and expertise in studying tumor immunosurveillance and the contribution of immunity to cancer risk and prevention.

Dr. Yurong Song earned a Ph.D. from Purdue University and completed postdoctoral training at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, followed by research fellow training at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at Frederick. She joined the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNLCR) in 2015.
Dr. Song's research focuses on discovering and validating novel drug targets and developing cancer prevention and therapeutic strategies using preclinical models, including genetically engineered mouse models (GEMMs), organoids, and 2D cancer cell lines. She has developed and characterized multiple GEMMs representing glioblastoma, prostate cancer, Lynch syndrome-associated colorectal and endometrial cancers, and an inducible pan-cancer model, and has established organoid models that serve as robust platforms for studying cancer biology and evaluating new therapies.
Her recent work has focused on developing next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based liquid biopsy biomarkers for cancer surveillance and clinical trial monitoring. She led the development of a CLIA-validated liquid biopsy assay for surveillance of cancers in individuals with Lynch syndrome, with additional applications in constitutional mismatch repair deficiency (CMMRD). Dr. Song also collaborates with the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) to identify novel cancer prevention and therapeutic candidates through high-throughput screening of natural product libraries and preclinical evaluation in advanced mouse models.

Dr. Vilar-Sanchez is Professor and Chair ad interim of the Department of Cancer Prevention at MD Anderson. He is a physician-scientist and a medical oncologist by training with clinical expertise in hereditary colorectal cancer syndromes and colorectal medical oncology. Dr. Vilar-Sanchez’s research efforts are focused in developing novel cancer interception strategies including vaccines and chemopreventive agents, and early detection methods for patients at high-risk for colorectal cancer development. The Vilar-Sanchez laboratory has characterized the genomic and transcriptomic landscape of pre-cancers using next-generation sequencing approaches and has identified novel targets for interception. In parallel, his research team has applied systematically this same workflow to genetically engineered mouse models that mimic the natural history of hereditary colorectal cancer syndromes to perform cross-species comparisons and validate these novel preventive agents and biomarkers. The laboratory has teamed with other groups to develop ex vivo models that better recapitulate the biology of normal mucosa and premalignancy. In the field of clinical research, Dr. Vilar-Sanchez has designed, implemented and participated in several investigator-initiated clinical trials for early drug development in cancer interception including vaccines and immune-modulators.

Joseph C. Wu, MD, PhD is Director of Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and Simon H. Stertzer, MD, Professor of Medicine and Radiology at Stanford University. He received his MD from Yale University School of Medicine. He trained in internal medicine and cardiology at UCLA followed by a PhD in the Dept of Molecular & Medical Pharmacology.

Dr. Wu’s research integrates human genomics, stem cells & organoids, AI, and drug discovery. The main goals are to (i) understand fundamental disease mechanisms, (ii) advance precision medicine for patients, and (iii) accelerate drug discovery through “new approach methodologies” (NAMs) and “clinical trial in a dish” (CTiD) concept. Dr. Wu has published >700 manuscripts with H-index of 154 on Google scholar. He has been listed among the top 0.1% of highly cited researchers by Web of Science for 8 consecutive years (2018-2025).

Dr. Wu is an elected member or fellow of American Association of Physicians (AAP), American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAA&S), National Academy of Inventors (NAI), and National Academy of Medicine (NAM).

Dr. Wu is currently president of the Association of University Cardiologists and previously served as President of the American Heart Association (AHA). He has received several prestigious awards, including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, NIH Roadmap Transformative Award, Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) given out by President Obama at the White House, AHA Distinguished Scientist Award, and the ASCI Stanley J. Korsmeyer Award. He currently sits on the boards of the Keystone Symposia, AHA, and Greenstone Biosciences (https://greenstonebio.com/), a startup company that he co-founded which focuses on drug discovery.

Ming You, MD, PhD, is the Daniel E. Lehane Endowed Professor and Director of the Center for Cancer Prevention at Houston Methodist Cancer Center and Houston Methodist Research Institute. He received his medical degree from Beijing Medical College and his PhD in Pathology from the Medical College of Ohio. He also trained as a visiting scientist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIH). Throughout his distinguished career, Dr. You has held multiple leadership positions at The Ohio State University, Washington University School of Medicine, and the Medical College of Wisconsin, where he served as Director of the Cancer Center and Senior Associate Dean for Cancer Research before joining Houston Methodist in 2021. His laboratory has developed a series of novel mitochondria-targeted compounds with enhanced efficacy and safety for cancer prevention and treatment. Most recently, his group has demonstrated that mitochondria-targeted atovaquone (Mito-ATO) potently inhibits primary tumor growth and metastasis by remodeling the tumor immune microenvironment. Their studies indicate that Mito-ATO functions as an in situ cancer vaccine by activating systemic T-cell immunity through simultaneous targeting of granulocytic myeloid-derived suppressor cells and regulatory T cells. Dr. You's current research focuses on defining the immune mechanisms underlying Mito-ATO–mediated tumor control, evaluating its ability to prevent metastatic disease in preclinical models, and advancing this novel therapeutic strategy toward first-in-human clinical trials for patients with triple-negative breast cancer.