Team

Bonnie J. Addario, Founder of ACLMI, Founder and Chair of ACLF, and Lung Cancer Survivor, has been an activist, advocate, educator and change agent empowering patients and giving them a strong voice in the fight against lung cancer since receiving a stage 3B diagnosis more than a decade ago. Although thrust into a role that she had never envisioned for herself, she embraced it and now considers it to be her second career and a personal calling. Recognizing the critical need for education, empowerment, advocacy and research to help patients and families, especially those without resources and support, Bonnie and her family founded the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation (ALCF) in 2006, and then went on to found the Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute (ALCMI) with her husband, Tony Addario, in 2008. Bonnie’s business acumen and skills honed in her first career as President of Olympian Oil Company and Commercial Fueling Network (CFN), as Past President of the CA Independent Oil Marketers Association (CIOMA) and as a community activist serving on diverse boards have all contributed to her work at ALCF in developing business strategies and being the Foundation’s patient voice at national/international conferences, on panels and boards, and to industry leaders, clinicians and policy makers. Bonnie’s personal interests include collecting wine, travel, sports (Go SF Giants!) and spending time with family and friends at Lake Tahoe.

Dr. David R. Gandara is a Professor of Medicine at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine, and serves as Associate Director of Clinical Research and Director of Thoracic Oncology at the University of California, Davis Cancer Center.

Dr. Gandara received his medical degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, followed by internship and residency at the Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma and a fellowship at the Letterman Army Medical Center Presidio of San Francisco.

Dr. Gandara is a diplomat of the American Board of Internal Medicine specializing in Medical Oncology. He is currently principal investigator for a number of research projects in lung cancer, pharmacology trials at various phases, and Southwest Oncology Group trials. He is the principal investigator for a National Cancer Institute award to the California Cancer Consortium for Early Therapeutic Trials of New Anti-Cancer Agents.

Dr. Gandara is President of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) and serves on the board of directors. Dr. Gandara is chair of the Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG) Lung Committee, and co-chair of the NCI-directed Investigational Drug Steering Committee. He has written over 300 articles, book chapters, abstracts and editorials. He is editor-in-chief of Clinical Lung Cancer, serves on the editorial board of four oncology journals, and is a manuscript reviewer for eight additional journals. He served as secretary-treasurer and a member of the board of directors for the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). Dr. Gandara is a member of the Scientific Leadership Council in Lung Cancer.

Dr. David M. Jablons is Professor and Chief of Thoracic Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco, and Ada Distinguished Professor of Thoracic Oncology at the UCSF Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center, where he also serves as Program Leader of Thoracic Oncology.

Dr. Jablons received his undergraduate degree from Yale University and his medical degree from Albany Medical College of Union University. He has also trained at numerous highly-regarded institutions including Tufts-New England Medical Center, Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, the Surgery Branch of NCI, Cornell University Medical Center, New York Hospital/Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Brigham & Women’s Hospital.

Dr. Jablons established the UCSF/UC Davis Thoracic Oncology Conference, one of the oldest and longest running didactic conferences in the field. He also helped found the International Pan Pacific Lung Cancer Conference. He is a strong supporter of international efforts to expand lung cancer research, and helped start the China Clinical Trials Consortium (CCTC). He also co-founded the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation and the Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute.

Dr. Jablons leads a team of scientists developing molecularly targeted therapies for lung cancer and mesothelioma. Key research areas include the Wnt and Hedgehog (Hh) pathways, and stem cell signaling targets. The Thoracic Oncology Tissue Bank is one of the largest such repositories in the U.S. and serves as a hub for interdisciplinary collaboration. Dr. Jablons is also a principal investigator on two NIH R01 grants and has authored over 100 peer-reviewed research papers. In addition, he serves as a reviewer on several NIH study groups.

Dr. Pasi A. Jänne is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Assistant Physician at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts.

After earning his MD and PhD from the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr Jänne completed his internship and residency in Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston. He subsequently completed fellowship training at Dana Farber Cancer Institute/Massachusetts General Hospital combined program in medical oncology in 2001. In 2002 he earned a Masters Degree in clinical investigation from Harvard University.

Dr. Jänne’s research interests include investigation of oncogene mutations and how these correlate with clinical response to targeted therapies in lung cancer. He was one of the investigators who initially discovered EGFR mutations in 2004 and has subsequently studied their effect on clinical outcome of patients and on mechanisms of resistance. He has also worked on developing non-sequencing based technology to detect mutations in EGFR and other oncogenes. Dr. Jänne is a member of the Cancer and Leukemia Group B respiratory committee. He is also an active member of ASCO, AACR, ESMO and IASLC. He was elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation in 2008.

Dr. Ite Laird-Offringa is an Associate Professor of Surgery and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Southern California (USC), Keck School of Medicine. She is also the Director of the Program in Biomedical and Biological Sciences at USC.

Dr. Laird-Offringa earned her Ph.D. from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands, and conducted postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School. She joined the USC faculty in 1996. She is a member of many national and international professional and advocate societies, including the American Association for Cancer Research, the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, and the National Lung Cancer Partnership, and she serves as a reviewer on the NIH/NCI Cancer Genetics study section.

Dr. Laird-Offringa is committed to the development of better tools for early lung cancer detection. Her laboratory’s current research in lung cancer focuses on the identification of cancer-specific changes in antibodies and in DNA methylation, a reversible alteration of DNA that can affect gene expression. The obtained information is used for biomarker development and to gain insight into the sequential molecular steps that happen during the development of lung cancer. The Laird-Offringa laboratory is funded by two NIH R01 grants and by generous donations and grants from several private foundations and individuals. In her work, she collaborates with pathologists, oncologists, surgeons, epidemiologists and a variety of other scientists.

Harvey I. Pass, MD is Professor of Thoracic Oncology, Vice-Chair Research, Department of Cardiology, and first Division Chief of General Thoracic Surgery at NYU School of Medicine. He joined NYU Medical Center in 2005 to lead the Division of Thoracic Surgery and Thoracic Oncology. His previous positions include Chief, Thoracic Oncology at the Karmanos Cancer Institute, and Head of the Thoracic Oncology Section of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Pass received his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and his M.D. from Duke University. He completed his surgical residency at Duke and University of Mississippi. He completed his residency in Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Pass also completed a fellowship in Thoracic Oncology at NCI.

Dr. Pass has published over 300 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine regarding the discovery of osteopontin as a possible early detection biomarker for mesothelioma. He is an editor of Lung Cancer: Principles and Practice, Surgery: Basic Science and Clinical Evidence, Oncology: An Evidence Based Approach, and Malignant Mesothelioma: Advances in Pathogenesis, Diagnosis, and Translational Therapies. Dr. Pass is Associate Editor for the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, Surgical Editor for Clinical Lung Cancer and a member of the editorial board for Clinical Cancer Research.

Dr. Pass is presently on the Board of Directors for the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, the International Mesothelioma Interest Group, the Lung Cancer Alliance, and the Mesothelioma Foundation.

Dr. Rafael Rosell is Scientific Director for Oncology at the Catalan Institute of Oncology, Chief of the Medical Oncology Service at Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol in Badalona, Chairman of Pangaea Biotech, SA and Professor at the University of Barcelona.

Dr. Rosell is the founder and President of the Spanish Lung Cancer Group (SLCG), Chairman of the IASLC 2005 World Conference on Lung Cancer, and Co-Chair of the 1st and 2nd IASLC-ESMO European Lung Cancer Conferences. He is an active member of the ESMO Educational Committee, and the EORTC Protocol Review Committee. He is on the Editorial Board of several peer-reviewed medical journals. Dr. Rosell has authored over 450 articles in peer-reviewed journals and given more than 600 presentations at conferences around the world.

Since the early 1990s, Dr. Rosell has been involved in the application of genetic research to the clinical setting. Recent translational research by Dr Rosell’s group has focused on chemosensitivity in relation to polymorphisms of DNA repair genes, methylation patterns in circulating DNA, and gene expression profiles in RNA. Dr. Rosell’s group is also involved in research on EGFR mutations and has implemented large-scale screening for EGFR mutations in newly-diagnosed lung cancer patients in Spain in order to select patients for treatment with EGFR inhibitors instead of chemotherapy as first-line treatment. In the SLCG’s ongoing trials in the adjuvant and the metastatic setting of NSCLC, customized chemotherapy and targeted therapy are being implemented as standard treatment.

Dr. Giorgio Scagliotti is Full Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the University of Torino. Dr. Scagliotti earned his medical degree and completed the postgraduate training in respiratory medicine, internal medicine, and medical oncology at the University of Torino. He is chief of the Thoracic Oncology Division at the S. Luigi Hospital, Orbassano (Torino) and Head of the Department of Clinical and Biological Sciences at University of Torino. He is also the Chairperson of the Postgraduate School in Respiratory Medicine at the same University.

Over the last 15 years Dr. Scagliotti’s research interests included experimental studies on basic and clinical applied research on lung cancer, including translational research. He has been and currently is the study coordinator of several European and international clinical trials on lung cancer chemotherapy and he has been a key investigator in several Italian studies investigating the role of chemotherapy in early stage non-small cell lung cancer. Dr. Scagliotti is a member of numerous scientific societies, including the Italian Society of Respiratory Medicine, the European Respiratory Society, the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer. From 2002 to 2005 he was member of the International Affair Committee of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and from 2003-07 Executive Board member of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer. He served on the Publication Committee (2005-08) and in Program Committee of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in the period 2005-07. Dr. Scagliotti is a manuscript reviewer for 11 scientific journals. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Critical Review in Oncology and Hematology, and Oncology News. He is Associate Editor for Journal of Thoracic Oncology and International Editor for Clinical Lung Cancer. He is the author or co-author of more than 180 publications in peer-reviewed journals and he is the International Editor of the 4th Edition of the book “Lung Cancer : Principles and practice”

Dr. Jean-Charles Soria is a Professor of Medecine and Medical Oncology at South-Paris University. He is a tenure-track and full time cancer specialist at Institut Gustave Roussy. Dr Soria trained as a medical oncologist and obtained the Silver medal from Paris Medical School in 1997. He gained a PhD degree in the fundamental basis of oncogenesis in 2001, and completed his training with a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Thoracic Head and Neck Medical Oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, USA.

Professor Soria is currently head of the phase I program at Institut Gustave Roussy and is a member of the lung cancer unit with a focus on targeted therapies. His main research interest are: early clinical development, phase I trials across solid tumors, pharmacodynamic biomarkers, lung cancer. He is also involved in translational research aspects related to tumor progression notably in lung cancer models (INSERM unit 981). Dr Soria was a member of ESMO executive committee from 2008 to 2009, and serves as an ASCO committee member since 2006. He has contributed to over 230 peer-reviewed publications, including publications as first or last author in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and the Journal of Clinical Oncology.