NCI Early Drug Development (Speaker Bios)

Sarah Adams, MD, Professor and Fellowship Research Mentor, graduated from University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine where she also completed her OB-GYN residency. She completed her GO fellowship at University of Pennsylvania Hospital in 2009, and stayed on as faculty at Penn with a research appointment in the Ovarian Cancer Research Center. Dr. Adams joined the UNM GO division in 2012 where she maintains active clinical practice and leads a translational research lab focused on ovarian cancer immunology. She is the Co-leader of the Cancer Therapeutics Research Program for the UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center P30 grant and the Associate Director of the Translational Science for the UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is nationally recognized for her work in immunology of ovarian cancer and novel immuno-oncology clinical trials.

Dr. Beumer is a tenured Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences with a secondary appointment in the School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and holds the distinction of Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology (DABT). He is intimately involved in the design, execution, supervision, and data analysis of PK and metabolic studies covering the entire spectrum of preclinical vitro-vivo, clinical phase 1, 2, 3, and post-marketing studies, with funding in each phase. Dr. Beumer is PI on one of only 3 NCI N02 Preclinical Pharmacology Contracts, mPI of one of the two U24 PK consortia supporting the NCI ETCTN efforts, and he is mPI of one of only 8 clinical ETCTN UM1 Grants, funding the Pittsburgh Cancer Consortium. He directs the Cancer Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics Facility (CPPF) of the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center (HCC), traditionally also the PK core of the NSABP-RTOG-GOG (NRG) and ALLIANCE. He has served as co-chair of the NCI Investigational Drug Steering Committee (IDSC), is co-chair of the IDSC Pharmacology Task Force, and is a founding member of the “TDM in oncology” committee of the International Association of Therapeutic Drug Monitoring and Clinical Toxicology (IATDMCT).
Dr. Beumer has ~200 peer-reviewed publications and has presented at national and international venues. He is also the Editor-in-Chief (U.S.) of the journal Cancer Chemotherapy and Pharmacology and was awarded the 2021 Michaele Christian Oncology Drug Development Award and Lectureship by the National Cancer Institute Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program.
Dr. Beumer’s interests are the development of anticancer agents partnering with both NCI and pharmaceutical partners, focusing on early trials that aim to study the pharmacology (PK/PD) of these novel agents (first-in man, mass balance, organ dysfunction, etc.).

Michael A. Carducci, MD, FACP, FASCO
AEGON Professor in Prostate Cancer Research
Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Baltimore Maryland

Dr. Carducci is the AEGON Professor in Prostate Cancer Research and the Vice Chair for Solid Tumor Oncology at the Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. His clinical research focus is on the evaluation of new therapies for urologic cancers, primarily prostate and renal cancer. His collaborations have led to the development of agents such as temsirolimus in renal cell cancer, denosumab for skeletal related events in prostate cancer, and the use of docetaxel in hormone-sensitive metastatic prostate cancer. He has been PI of the NCI U01/UM1 for Early Drug Development supporting ETCTN efforts at Hopkins since 2001. Dr. Carducci has received the Michaele Christian Award for Oncology Drug Development. He is a member of the Miller-Coulson Academy of Clinical Excellence. Before taking on the Vice Chair role, he serves as Associate Director for Clinical Research in the Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, served 13 years as Chair of the GU Oncology Committee of ECOG-ACRIN, and 10 years as the Associate Editor for GU Cancers for the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Dr. Choudhury is a medical oncologist and clinical/translational investigator within the Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He received a BA in Chemistry from Johns Hopkins University and received his MD PhD from Columbia University. He currently serves as Chair of the Gelb Center for Translational Research, and his research interests include investigation of genetic and epigenetic biomarkers from circulating free DNA from patients with metastatic cancer, biomarker studies from other banked human specimens from patients participating in clinical trials, and clinical investigation in novel therapeutics and treatment strategies in prostate cancer.

Translational medical oncologist clinically focused on melanoma, cutaneous SCC and drug development. Heavy translational interest focused on multi-omic approaches to understanding response/resistance to immunotherapy in cancer.

Our clinical and translational efforts center around investigating the following scientific areas:
a) The role of the intestinal microbiome in mediating response/resistance to PD-1 immune checkpoint blockade.
b) The role of innate agonism in synergy with PD-1 blockade.
c) Evaluating novel immune checkpoint blockades in particular TIM-3, TIGIT in patients.

To study these areas, we design clinical trials and evaluate biospecimens. Highlights include:
a) High pathologic response rate when TLR9 agonist CMP-001 is combined with PD-1 inhibitor Nivolumab.
b) Microbiome modulation resensitizes primary refractory melanoma patients to PD-1 therapy. FIH trial published in Science (Davar, Science 2021), metagenomic biomarkers published in Nat Med (McCulloch and Davar, Nat Med 2022). Follow up trials testing this in melanoma, and NSCLC.

Dr. Jacqueline S. Garcia is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is a clinical/translational investigator in the Adult Leukemia Program at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an attending physician at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital. She graduated from University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine and completed her internship and residency training in Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago. She next completed Hematology and Oncology Fellowship training at Stanford University. She joined Dana-Farber in 2015. Dr. Garcia’s research focuses on the design and execution of scientifically based early phase clinical and proof-of-concept studies in advanced myeloid malignancies, including MDS, myelofibrosis and acute myeloid leukemia. Much of her research centers on identifying novel therapeutic opportunities to leverage the anti-apoptotic pathway in chemoresistant leukemia and to address or prevent post-transplant relapse in the context of investigator-initiated trials (IIT). She is a Principal Investigator for several clinical trials, including IIT, ETCTN/CTEP, and pharmaceutical studies. Her research has received support from the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and Conquer Cancer Foundation.

STEPHANIE LHEUREUX MD, PhD is a Medical Oncologist, Clinician Investigator, Site Lead of Gynecology Oncology and co-director of the Beyond Chemotherapy Program at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. She holds the Westaway Chair in Ovarian Cancer Research and is an Associate Professor of Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Her clinical and academic interests are focused in gynecologic cancers and early drug development with an emphasis on translational research and have garnered two ASCO Merit awards. She received the 2019 Career Development Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the 2021 Young Investigator Award from University of Toronto Division of Medical Oncology. Internationally, she is co-Chair of the Translational Research Committee and Director representing Princess Margaret Consortium at the international Gynecologic Cancer InterGroup (GCIG). She is also a member of the Gynecologic Cancer Steering Committees at the US National Cancer Institute. In the last five years, she has >60 peer-reviewed publications in widely cited journals such as CA: Cancer Journal for Clinicians, Clinical Cancer Research, JAMA Oncology, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Lancet, Lancet Oncology and Gynecology Oncology. She is principal investigator or co-principal investigator of different clinical trials and in several large-scale peer reviewed funding opportunities from the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute, Conquer Cancer Foundation/American Society for Clinical Oncology, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Ovarian Cancer Canada and Terry Fox Research Institute that converge preclinical and clinical areas of interest.

Livius Penter is a Clinician Scientist at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany with a strong interest in bioinformatics, single cell genomics and tumor immunology. He received his MD from Charité in 2014 and successfully defended his medical thesis (Dr. med.) in 2015. After work as Junior Clinician Scientist with Leo Hansmann at Charité from 2015 to 2019, he completed his postdoctoral research training in Cathy Wu’s lab at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute from 2019 to 2023.
Since 2023 he is leading his own research group supported by funding from the Max-Eder Research Group program from the German Cancer Aid (Deutsche Krebshilfe) focused on AML, immunotherapies and allogeneic stem cell transplantation.

Dr. Shallis received his MD from Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, completed his residency training at Brown University-Rhode Island Hospital and fellowship training at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

He is focused on the care and research of patients with myeloid malignancies, particularly acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). He currently participates as an investigator in a number of clinical trials, serves as Study Chair of several NCI-funded trials, aimed at improving the outcomes of patients with AML and MDS.

Dr. Shallis also maintains research interest in epidemiological, outcomes and effectiveness research as it pertains to the hematologic malignancies with a goal of identifying barriers to effective care and ultimately strategies to improve the outcomes of patients with these malignant diseases. Dr. Shallis conducts research with the Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy and Effectiveness Research (COPPER) Center at Yale University.

Dr. Shallis has presented his research at multiple regional, national and international meetings and is a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) clinical guidelines for MDS and AML panels. He is an author on more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, most of which as first author and has served as an ad hoc reviewer for many journals including Leukemia, Haematologica, Blood Advances, among others.

Jacob Thomas, MD is an assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at Keck Medical Center of USC and USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is currently serving as the Service Chief of Medical Oncology at Los Angeles General Medical Center, the Chair of the Phase I Committee, and is vice chair of the Clinical Investigations Committee (CIC) at USC. He is an active clinical investigator and has a passion for novel drug development for patients with advanced solid tumor malignancies, with a focus on patients with lung and head and neck cancers. He has published on drug development and presented findings at many national conferences. He was awarded NIH funding to conduct a phase 2 trial of a novel drug combination in head and neck cancer that is accruing patients nationally through the ETCTN. He is also working to improve accrual of racial and ethnic minority groups to clinical trials in order to provide increased access to novel therapeutics to all patients.