NCI Early Drug Development (Speaker Bios)

Annie Im, MD, FASCO is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh/UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. Dr. Im completed her Internal Medicine residency and Hematology/Oncology fellowship training at UPMC. She has been on faculty at UPMC since 2013, focusing on hematologic malignancies and stem cell transplantation. She currently serves as Associate Chief of Education for the Division of Hematology/Oncology, Program Director for the Hematology/Oncology Fellowship, and Subspecialty Education Coordinator for the Internal Medicine Residency. She has been involved in education nationally, through ASCO, ASH, and ASTCT; previous roles have included serving as Chair of the ASCO Oncology Training Programs Committee, Chair of the ASCO Faculty Development Task Force, and currently is Chair-elect of the ASCO Education Council. Her research and clinical interests focus on acute myeloid leukemia and chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) after stem cell transplant.

Dr. Michael Cecchini is a board-certified medical oncologist that specializes in the treatment of patients with advanced gastrointestinal (GI) cancers. His research is focused on early phase clinical trials to develop novel therapies that are biomarker driven for patients with advanced GI cancers. He is part of both the Phase 1 and GI Cancer teams at Yale and is Director of Clinical Research for the Yale Center for GI Cancers. Colorectal cancer represents a primary area of expertise within his broader GI oncology practice, with dedicated programmatic leadership as Co-Director of the Yale Colorectal Cancer Program. Furthermore, he performs translational research to better understand the relationship between DNA damage and the immune response for colorectal cancer to develop new biomarkers and treatment combinations for patients with advanced gastrointestinal cancers.

Aman Chauhan, MD, is a Associate Professor of Medicine at UCSF. earned his medical degree from Kasturba Medical College in Manipal, Karnataka, India. He completed a dual residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at Louisiana State University in New Orleans, followed by a fellowship in hematology and oncology at the University of Kentucky, where he developed a focused expertise in neuroendocrine tumors. He also completed a physician externship through the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program at the National Cancer Institute, with an emphasis on clinical trial design and clinical research.
Dr. Chauhan’s clinical and research interests focus on neuroendocrine neoplasms, including well-differentiated and poorly differ neuroendocrine neoplasms. He serves as national principal investigator on several investigator-initiated neuroendocrine cancer clinical trials. He is a member of the AJCC and ASCO neuroendocrine tumor guideline committees, co-chair of the SWOG Neuroendocrine Tumor Subcommittee, and a member of the Board of Directors of the North American Neuroendocrine Tumor Society.

Dr. Helen Chen joined NCI’s Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP) in 2000. She currently serves as Associate Chief of Immuno-oncology for the Investigational Drug Branch (IDB), leading activities related to the clinical development of new cancer immunotherapy agents and therapeutic antibodies. Dr. Chen is board-certified in Medical Oncology after completing her Fellowship training at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington D.C.

Dr Cote is physician at the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute in the Center for Connective Tissue Oncology and the Henri and Belinda Termeer Center for Targeted Therapies (phase 1) with expertise in sarcoma clinical care and early-phase drug development. He serves as the sarcoma phase I lead at MGBCI, where his clinical research focuses on developing novel therapeutics for connective tissue malignancies, particularly targeting DNA damage response (DDR), epigenetic/transcription pathways, immunotherapy, drug delivery, and mechanisms of drug resistance. Additionally, he is the chair of the Clinical Trials Development Committee at the Sarcoma Alliance for Research through Collaboration and he serves on advisory boards for multiple sarcoma-focused patient advocacy organizations with the goal of facilitating drug development in rare and ultra-rare cancers.

Dr. de la Fuente is the Chief of the Neuro-Oncology Division and Director of the Neuro-Oncology Fellowship Program at the Department of Neurology, University of Miami, and co-Director of the Sylvester Brain Tumor Institute and Chair of the Neuro-Oncology Site Disease Group at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. In these leadership roles, she oversees both the clinical and clinical research programs in Neuro-Oncology at the University of Miami.
Dr. de la Fuente is a graduate of the Neuro-Oncology Fellowship program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where she served as a Consultant in the Department of Neurology after finishing her fellowship. As a clinical trialist and translational researcher, Dr. de la Fuente’s work is dedicated to advancing targeted therapies and biomarkers for primary brain tumors, with the overarching goal of delivering more effective, less toxic, and individualized treatment options.
Dr. de la Fuente is an active member of the Society for Neuro-Oncology (SNO), where she serves on the Board of Directors as neurology representative. Additionally, she is a Member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Florida Center for Brain Tumor Research, appointed by the President of the Florida Senate.

Dr. Garrido-Castro is a medical oncologist specialized in breast cancer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her research efforts focus on the development of novel therapeutic strategies for patients with breast cancer, with particular emphasis on the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer. Dr. Garrido-Castro is the Director of Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Research in the Division of Breast Oncology at Dana-Farber, and leads clinical trials studying immunotherapy, antibody drug conjugates, and targeted therapy approaches for patients with breast cancer.

Dr. Garrido-Castro's research has been supported by the National Cancer Institute, Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF), Susan G. Komen, Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO, Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Foundation, METAvivor, Terri Brodeur Breast Cancer Foundation, and Breast Cancer Alliance. She is the recipient of the 2023 Conquer Cancer – Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation Advanced Clinical Research Award and is a past recipient of the Komen Career Catalyst Research Grant and BCRF Marion R. Wright Award for Scientific Excellence.

Steven Gore, MD, earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees at Yale, performed his residency at the University of Chicago and his oncology fellowship at Johns Hopkins. He rose from instructor to full professor at Johns Hopkins, and, in 2013, he became professor of medicine and director of hematologic malignancies at Yale. He joined the Investigational Drug Branch at CTEP in 2020.

Dr. Gore is an internationally recognized expert in drug development in leukemia. His research career focused on the development of drugs with epigenetic targets for the treatment of myeloid disease. He has played a major role in the incorporation of epigenetic modifiers in the treatment of myeloid malignancies. Among his many other accomplishments, Dr. Gore served on the NCI Leukemia Steering Committee beginning in 2015 and served as co-chair from 2017 until he joined CTEP. Dr. Gore is author or co-author of over 200 scholarly publications including primary research papers, book chapters, books, reviews, and practice guidelines.

Dr. Candace Haddox is a Physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She specializes in Medical Oncology and the treatment of sarcomas, caring for patients in the DFCI Sarcoma Center and the Center for Cancer Therapeutic Innovation. Her clinical research focuses on early drug development, particularly novel targeted therapies and antibody-drug conjugates. Her translational research explores mechanisms of treatment resistance and potential biomarkers to predict response to therapy and prognosis. Dr. Haddox serves as the co-chair of the ETCTN disease-focused clinical investigators meeting and is an active member of the Alliance Experimental Therapeutics and Rare Tumor Committee.

Evan Hall M.D., M.Phil. is an Associate Professor at University of Washington/Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Seattle, WA. He is a medical oncologist who specializes in the care of patients with skin cancers and kidney cancer. He is an active clinical researcher, focusing on development of novel therapies for these diseases, particularly new immunotherapy approaches. He is also interested in measuring and optimizing quality of life in patients with advanced cancer treated with immunotherapy.

Dr. Ho currently serves as Chief of the Head and Neck Medical Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). He is an R01-funded, translational clinical researcher with an interest in developmental therapeutics for cancers of the head and neck. He has long had a focus in rare diseases, developing translational research programs in genomic subsets of head and neck squamous cell carcinomas, thyroid cancers, and salivary gland cancers. Within MSK, he serves as the chair of the Investigational New Drug (IND) committee. Externally, he has several national and international positions of leadership to promote the development of translational trial concepts in the head and neck field, including as co-lead of the Head and Neck Working Group in the Experimental Therapeutics and Rare Tumor Committee of the Alliance cooperative group, board member for the International Thyroid Oncology Group, and member of the NCI Head and Neck Steering Committee.

Dr. Brian Ko joined the Investigational Drug Branch (IDB) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 2024. He earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and his M.D. from the University of Illinois. He completed his internal medicine residency and medical oncology/hematology fellowship at Montefiore Einstein. He then undertook further subspeciality training in early phase cancer clinical trials and oncologic drug development at the Advanced Developmental Therapeutics Training Program at NCI.

Dr. Leon-Ferre is an Associate Professor of Oncology at Mayo Clinic, and the Co-chair of the Mayo TNBC Working Group. Clinically, he is focused on the management of patients with breast cancer and on therapeutic clinical trials, with special focus on TNBC. His research seeks to understand the complex interactions between the immune system and the breast cancer tumor microenvironment in tumor tissue and in peripheral blood, and leverage this understanding to identify predictive biomarkers and design clinical trials aimed at optimizing systemic therapy strategies.

Pertaining to his talk today, Dr. Leon-Ferre is leading a phase 1 trial evaluating inhibition of DNA methyltransferases as a potential strategy to enhance the efficacy of chemoimmunotherapy in patients with metastatic TNBC.

Dr. Lipson is an internationally-recognized cutaneous oncology and clinical immunotherapy specialist at Johns Hopkins. He received his medical degree in 2005 from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, where he graduated with distinction in research. He completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, and completed a Medical Oncology fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

Dr. Lipson conducts translational clinical trials for patients with melanoma and other skin cancers. Dr. Lipson’s publications include the first reports of organ transplant recipients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors for advanced cancer (J Clin Onc 2014, New Engl J Med 2016). Based on his published work, Dr. Lipson initiated the first prospective clinical trial testing a novel combination of immune-based therapies for kidney transplant recipients with advanced selected cancers (Schenk et al., J Clin Onc 2024).

Dr. Lipson is a leader in the clinical development of relatlimab, an antibody blocking the LAG-3 immune checkpoint. He co-led the first phase 3 study establishing the LAG-3 pathway as the third immune checkpoint pathway in history, after CTLA-4 and PD-1, for which blockade has clinical benefit. (Lipson et al, EJC 2025) Based on results from this study, the FDA approved relatlimab+nivolumab in March 2022. He is the Principal Investigator of a phase 2 trial testing combination immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy—including anti-LAG-3—for patients with advanced basal cell carcinoma.

Dr. Lipson is an educator in the field of cancer immunotherapy, particularly about management of immune-mediated drug toxicities. He conducts regular clinical practices in Baltimore, Maryland and at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C. as part of the multidisciplinary Melanoma/Skin Cancer Program at Johns Hopkins.

Dr. Liu received her medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 2002. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and her fellowship in Hematology Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In 2008, she joined the staff of Dana-Farber and Brigham and Women's Hospital, where she is a medical oncologist and clinical investigator in the Division of Gynecologic Oncology. Her research focuses on identifying and validating potential therapeutic targets in advanced platinum-resistant ovarian cancer, in an in-vitro setting as well as in a murine xenograft model of ovarian cancer. Dr. Liu is also active in conducting clinical research directed towards developing a better understanding of the basic biology of ovarian cancer and translating discoveries from the laboratory into the clinical setting.

Dr. Alice Mims is a Professor with Tenure and a physician-scientist whose research focuses on developing novel targeted therapies and improving outcomes for patients with acute leukemias and other myeloid malignancies. She serves as the Co-Leader of the Leukemia and Hematological Malignancies Program at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center and as the Associate Director of Clinical Research for the Division of Hematology.
For the past decade, Dr. Mims has served as a key leader of the Blood Cancer United Beat AML Master Clinical Trial, first as Senior Medical Director and currently as Chief Medical Officer. This international umbrella study has transformed the treatment paradigm for newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia, enrolling more than 650 patients across 17 treatment subprotocols and generating 18 high-impact publications in journals including Nature Medicine, Cancer Discovery, and the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Her translational research program centers on advancing precision medicine through close collaboration with laboratory investigators. She serves as a multi-PI on several NIH-funded R01 grants focused on optimizing treatment strategies for IDH-mutated AML and developing novel approaches targeting DHODH and NAMPT. Dr. Mims also leads innovative studies exploring menin inhibitor–based combinations, including the current phase 1 ETCTN 10596 trial with revumenib in combination with intensive chemotherapy which is being incorporated into a Phase 2 study within NCI’s MyeloMATCH study.
Through clinical and translational research, Dr. Mims is committed to developing targeted and immune-based therapies that address resistance mechanisms and improve long-term outcomes for patients with acute leukemias and myeloid malignancies.

Paul Nghiem, MD, PhD, is Chair of the Department of Dermatology at the University of Washington and a physician-scientist whose research focuses on Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC). His work has helped define the role of the immune system in controlling MCC and contributed to the development of immune checkpoint blockade as a standard therapy for advanced disease. Dr. Nghiem led key clinical and translational studies that supported FDA approvals of immunotherapy agents for MCC and has developed blood-based surveillance approaches including MCPyV oncoprotein antibody testing and circulating tumor DNA assays.
He currently leads the MATRiX trial, an NCI-sponsored multicenter study evaluating ATR inhibition combined with immune checkpoint blockade for patients with anti–PD-(L)1 refractory MCC. His research interests include tumor immunology, biomarkers, radiation-immunotherapy combinations, and mechanisms to overcome resistance to immunotherapy.
Dr. Nghiem serves as Vice Chair of the NCCN Merkel Cell Carcinoma Guidelines Panel and is President-elect of the Society for Investigative Dermatology.

Dr. Patel is an assistant professor of medicine, director of the inpatient leukemia service, and associate program director for the adult hematology-oncology fellowship at the University of Chicago. In addition he serves on the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) panels for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), respectively. Dr. Patel received his MD from the University of Missouri-Columbia where he was also elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) medical honor society. He then completed his internal medicine residency at the McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University and served as chief medical resident. Subsequently, he went to the University of Chicago for adult hematology-oncology fellowship and served as chief fellow. Dr. Patel's clinical and research focus is acute leukemia and myeloid malignancies. In addition, he was recognized with a 2025 National Cancer Institute Early Career Investigator Award.

Lorraine Pelosof grew up in Dallas and graduated from The University of Texas at Austin. She completed her M.D. and Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology at Washington University in St. Louis and then completed her Internal Medicine Residency at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Following her residency, she completed her fellowship training in Medical Oncology at Johns Hopkins. There her research focused on DNA promoter methylation in gastrointestinal tumors. She then served as an Assistant Professor in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at UT Southwestern. She moved back to Maryland where she was a Medical Officer on the GI oncology team in the Office of Oncologic Diseases at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. After several years at the FDA, Lorraine joined the Investigational Drug Branch in CTEP in 2023.

Dr. Cheryl Pickett-Gies joined CTEP’s Investigational Drug Branch in 2020. Her current portfolio includes immune check point inhibitors and modulators, antibody drug conjugates, bispecific and other antibody-based therapeutics. She is also director of the IDB/CTEP externship/ fellowship program. Dr. Pickett earned her PhD in biochemistry at the University of California (UC) Davis and her MD at the University of Colorado. She completed residency in Internal Medicine at UC Davis and a clinical and research fellowship in Endocrinology at the University of Colorado. She subsequently held academic appointments at the University of Colorado and the University of Washington Medical Centers before moving from academia to oncology clinical development positions in the biotech/pharma sector, first at Merck and later at Amgen.

Dr. Pickett's early research focused on the mechanisms by which growth factors and hormones modulate activity of protein kinases; subsequently including work to elucidate how aberrancies in these signal transduction mechanisms modulate gene transcription and cell growth in tumor models. During her fellowship and academic appointments, her clinical focus was on diagnosis and management of endocrine tumors; she was co-founder of a multidisciplinary endocrine tumor clinic at the University of Washington. Upon moving to biotech/pharma research in 2004, she has established broad oncology clinical trial expertise developing and conducting trials across phases 1-3, covering a wide range of compounds, mechanisms of action, and tumor indications.

Michael Rosenzweig, M.D., M.S., joined City of Hope in 2011, as a staff physician and associate professor in the Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation. Dr. Rosenzweig received his bachelor's in psychology from Emory University and went on to earn a Master of Science in physiology and biophysics from Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. He attended the University of Arizona College of Medicine for his medical degree. He completed his residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in hematology/oncology at Boston Medical Center, during which he was appointed chief fellow. From 2009 to 2011, Dr. Rosenzweig was a fellow in bone marrow transplantation at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, New York.
As a hematologist and member of the plasma cell disease team, Dr. Rosenzweig has a clinical focus on multiple myeloma and related diseases, including Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia, POEMs syndrome and light chain amyloidosis.

Dr. Rosenzweig enjoys caring for a multitude of patients with multiple myeloma at all stages of the disease process and actively participates in clinical research exploring new treatments. He has a particular interest in smoldering myeloma, a precursor condition to active disease, and is actively involved in research exploring new treatments to prevent disease progression.

As the director of the amyloidosis program at City of Hope, he greatly enjoys caring for patients with all forms of amyloidosis, including light chain (AL), a disease closely related to multiple myeloma, as well as transthyretin (TTR), secondary amyloidosis (AA) and LECT2.

He works closely with a multidisciplinary team, including cardiology, nephrology and neurology, to care for patients with amyloidosis. His research interests include finding new treatments for amyloidosis at various stages of the disease process.

Dr. Vaibhav Sahai is an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Lindsay Olson Pancreatic Cancer Research Professor and serves as the Section Head of Gastrointestinal Oncology in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the University of Michigan. He is a physician-scientist in the multidisciplinary pancreatic and liver tumor programs whose work focuses on translating laboratory discoveries into precision therapeutic strategies for pancreaticobiliary cancers. He serves as Principal Investigator on multiple investigator-initiated, multi-institutional trials and has extensive experience developing, conducting, and completing innovative early-phase studies.

Dr. Shallis received his MD degree from Rutgers-Robert Wood Medical School, Piscataway, New Jersey. He completed an Internal Medicine Residency at Brown University-Rhode Island Hospital, Providence, followed by a Hematology-Oncology Fellowship at Yale University-New Haven Hospital, Connecticut where he was faculty until joining the Leukemia group at Moffitt Cancer Center in 2025. Dr. Shallis’s clinical interests focus on the care of patients with myeloid malignancies and acute leukemias, particularly acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). His research interests center on clinical investigation for patients with myeloid malignancies, particularly clinical trials of novel agents and combination therapies.

Dr. Shapiro received his PhD in 1987 and his MD in 1988 from Cornell University, followed by postgraduate training in internal medicine at Beth Israel Hospital, Boston, where he served as chief medical resident. He completed a fellowship in medical oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, during which he investigated the role of cell-cycle-related proteins in lung cancer. He joined the Dana-Farber faculty in 1994.

Dr. Shapiro's practice is based in the Center for Cancer Therapeutic Innovation, where he develops and leads early phase clinical trials primarily focused on cell cycle and DNA repair inhibitor therapeutics and provides mentoring to early career investigators. As Senior Vice President, Developmental Therapeutics, he leads DFCI efforts for National Cancer Institute (NCI)-sponsored clinical trials developed through the Experimental Therapeutics Clinical Trials Network (ETCTN) and works integrally with multiple disease groups within the Institute.

Dr. Tuscano's areas of specialty include the treatment of leukemia, lymphoma, MDS, and multiple myeloma. He is also a member of the adult stem cell transplant team.

Dr. Tuscano has both basic/translation and clinical research interests that include the development of novel antibody and other immune-based therapeutics for hematologic malignancies.

I am an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Malignant Hematology and Medical Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine, and practice as a GI medical oncologist at the Hillman Cancer Center in Pittsburgh, PA, caring for patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma, neuroendocrine tumors of the GI tract, and colorectal cancer, among other GI malignancies. I graduated with a BA in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Harvard University and completed my medical training at the University of Pittsburgh. I then completed internal medicine residency at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, and my clinical oncology and hematology training at Yale School of Medicine. My clinical and translational interests are in developing molecularly targeted therapies and immuno-modulatory therapies for patients with immunologically "cold" GI tumors including colorectal and pancreatic adenocarcinomas and neuroendocrine neoplasms.