Phosphatidylserine Asymmetry and Cell Survival

Speakers

Organizers

Kenneth P. Olive, PhD

Columbia University Medical Center

Dr. Kenneth P. Olive began his doctoral studies in 1998 with Tyler Jacks at the MIT Center for Cancer Research, investigating the neomorphic effects of mutant p53 in a mouse model of Li-Fraumeni Syndrome. While at MIT, he also helped develop a conditional mutant model of advanced lung adenocarcinoma. After graduating in 2005, Dr. Olive began a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of David Tuveson at the University of Pennsylvania, later moving with the lab to the University of Cambridge in England. There he built a translational research facility for studying novel anticancer therapeutics in genetically engineered mouse models of pancreatic cancer. His studies into chemoresistance and the effects of Hh pathway inhibitors on drug delivery in pancreatic cancer were published in Science in 2009, and have led to multiple clinical trials to evaluate the approach in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer. In 2010, Dr. Olive joined the faculty of the Columbia University Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, where he has established a laboratory dedicated to translational science and experimental therapeutics in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

Philip Thorpe, PhD

UT Southwestern Medical Center

George Zavoico, PhD

MLV

George B. Zavoico, PhD, is Managing Director, Research, and a Senior Equity Research Analyst at MLV & Co, a boutique investment bank and institutional broker-dealer based in New York. He has over 7 years of experience as a life sciences analyst writing research on publicly traded equities. Prior to MLV, he was an equity analyst with Westport Capital Markets and Cantor Fitzgerald. Prior to working as an analyst, Dr. Zavoico established his own consulting company serving the biotech and pharmaceutical industries by providing competitive intelligence and marketing research, due diligence services, and guidance in regulatory affairs. He also wrote extensively on healthcare and the biotech and pharmaceutical industries for periodicals targeting the general public and industry executives. Dr. Zavoico began his career as a Senior Research Scientist at Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., moving on to management positions at Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and T Cell Sciences, Inc. (now Celldex Therapeutics, Inc.). He has a BS in Biology from St. Lawrence University and PhD in Physiology from the University of Virginia and has held post-doctoral positions at the University of Connecticut Health Sciences Center and Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Jennifer Henry, PhD

The New York Academy of Sciences

Speakers

Ari Helenius, PhD

ETH Hönggerberg, Zurich, Switzerland

Educated as a biochemist, Ari Helenius obtained his PhD in 1973 in the University of Helsinki, Finland. After a six year period in the newly founded European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, he became Professor in the Department of Cell Biology, Yale School of Medicine. In 1997, he moved to his current position as professor of biochemistry in ETH Zurich. His research has involved membrane biology, cell biology, virology, infectious disease biology, protein biochemistry, and glycobiology. In most of the studies, animal viruses—their structure, function, and host cell interactions—have been a central theme.

Philip Thorpe, PhD

UT Southwestern Medical Center

Philip Thorpe is a professor of pharmacology and holds the Serena S. Simmons Distinguished Chair at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. His expertise is in drug targeting, vascular targeting and most recently, antiviral research; his work has been published more than 200 times, including publications in Nature, Nature Medicine, Science, and Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences. He is an inventor on more than 240 issued and pending US and international patents. His long-standing collaboration with Peregrine Pharmaceuticals Inc, Tustin, CA, has culminated in the company developing bavituximab, a therapeutic antibody directed against the lipid, phosphatidylserine. Professor Thorpe has been awarded the American Cancer Society Award of Excellence, the Texas State Legislature Award, and the Pierce Immunotoxin Award. He received his Ph.D. from the Clinical Research Centre, London, U.K. He was formerly director of the Drug Targeting Laboratory at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London.

Chris Reutlingsperger, PhD

University of Maastricht, The Netherlands

Chris Reutelingsperger studied Biochemistry at the University of Utrecht and received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry of Thrombosis and Haemostasis from the Maastricht University (1987). He discovered annexin A5 and is inventor of the annexin A5 affinity assay to determine apoptosis in vitro and in vivo in animal models and in patients. He was senior investigator of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. Currently he is appointed Professor of Biochemistry and Apoptosis at Maastricht University. He founded and is chairman of the Board of the Virtual Laboratory Euregional PACT II, which is a cross-border collaboration between Universities of Maastricht, Leuven, Antwerp, Ghent and Aachen to develop innovative cancer diagnostics and therapeutics. He (co)-authored more than 150 peer-reviewed scientific papers and is inventor of 8 patents.

Alan Schroit, PhD

UT Southwestern Medical Center

Alan Schroit is Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. He received his Ph.D. degree in Immunology from the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical, Jerusalem, Israel and completed his postdoctotal training in lipid biochemistry at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Baltimore, Maryland. His research has focused on the chemistry, biology and pathology of phosphatidylserine (PS) exposure in the outer leaflet of cells. His studies have led to the first observations that PS is constitutively expressed on the surface of many tumor cells and serves as a recognition ligand for phagocytosis by macrophages. Dr. Schroit was a founding Director of the Gulf Coast Consortia for Membrane Biology and was formerly John Q. Gaines Professor for Cancer Biology and Deputy Chair of the Department of Cancer Biology at the M D Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.

David Ucker, PhD

University of Illinois at Chicago

David Ucker is Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Biophysics from the University of California at San Francisco in 1981, and focused on studies of Molecular Immunology during his postdoctoral training at M.I.T. and Harvard. He has a long-standing interest in the molecular and cellular biology of physiological cell death (apoptosis) and in the immunological consequences of apoptosis. Those interests have led to the characterization of the phenomenon of "innate apoptotic immunity," and to the identification of novel apoptotic recognition determinants involved in triggering that response. Professor Ucker is the elected chair of the upcoming Gordon Research Conference on Apoptotic Cell Recognition and Clearance. He has served as a member of several NIH and VA grant review panels, as a reviewer and editor for numerous scientific journals, and has received honors and recognition from a variety of scientific and educational societies.