Annals of Breast Cancer and Therapy

Dr. Gary Stein is the Director of the University of Vermont Cancer Center and Chair of the University of Vermont College of Medicine Department of Biochemistry. Trained in Biology and Pathology. Dr. Stein has a longstanding dedication to basic, translational, and clinical cancer investigation. He has facilitated transdisciplinary institutional, regional, and global collaborative research initiatives with a priority for maximizing effectiveness of multi-center research programs and clinical trials. The central theme of his research has been to discover mechanisms controlling proliferation and differentiation emphasizing compromised genetic and epigenetic regulation linked with cancer. His focus is on mechanisms and biomarkers including non-coding RNAs associated with prostate, leukemia, breast, uterine and ovarian cancer prevention, early detection, treatment and survivorship. His lab characterizes genetic and epigenetic regulation that mediates cell cycle control and the abbreviated pluripotent cell cycle in human embryonic stem cells, induced pluripotent cells, and cancer stem cells. The Stein lab is investigating breast and prostate tumor metastasis to bone, including microRNA-mediated control, and is defining mechanisms that govern combinatorial organization and assembly of regulatory machinery in nuclear microenvironments, and epigenetic control of cell fate and lineage commitment in biological control and cancer. Dr. Stein has mentored more than 175 graduate students, research and clinical fellows and junior faculty. His research program is funded by program project grants and several RO1 grants as well as a long-term pharmaceutical company grant and foundation support. He has published more than 850 papers in leading biomedical journals and edited more than 20 books.

Dr. Jose Russo is a Professor and Senior Member of Fox Chase Cancer Center. He is Director of the Irma H. Russo, MD-Breast Cancer Research Laboratory and Director of the Breast Cancer and The Environment Research Center at the Fox Chase Cancer Center-Temple Health. Dr. Russo is also Adjunct Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology at Jefferson Medical School and Professor of Biochemistry at Temple Medical School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dr. Russo has authored more than 400 publications; 13 books and is member of several editorial boards of scientific journals. He has received numerous research awards from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institute of Health (NIH) of the United States, from the American Cancer Society and the Department of Defense for his original research in breast cancer. For the last 35 years he has been an active member of the NIH peer review system and has served as a special reviewer for the American Cancer Society, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense and Veteran Affairs. Dr. Russo has trained 55 Ph.D. and M.D. investigators in cancer research. The interest of Dr. Russo has a broad base, but with a focused goal; 1) to understand the mechanisms that control cancer metastasis and 2) to develop strategies for breast cancer prevention. His major research interests include Breast Cancer, Endocrinology, Hormonal and Environmental Carcinogenesis, Hormone Breast Cancer Prevention, Molecular and Cell Biology, Pathology, Prognostic Indicators, Invasion and Metastasis.

Dr. Paul J L Zhang is a Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and have been in pathology practice in academic institutions for 21 years. He has diagnostic and research expertise in breast pathology for 17 years and served as director of diagnostic immunohistochemistry in the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Paul is also in charge of the service of evaluating predictive markers in breast cancer by immunohistochemical and in-situ hybridization techniques on clinical samples and working in collaboration with various basic scientists and clinical colleagues in research to translate basic scientific research findings to clinical application to benefit patient care such as reliable biomarkers for cancer diagnosis, prognosis and therapy prediction and to better understand cancer biology.

Dr. Thomas J Lawton is currently Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, USA. He is a board-certified surgical pathologist with 20 years of post-fellowship experience in academia and the private sector. A graduate of the University of Michigan Medical School. Dr. Lawton completed his residency and fellowship training at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University. He has served on the medical school faculties at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Washington. Dr. Lawton has co-authored numerous journal articles and textbook chapters on breast pathology including being the principle author and editor of 'Cambridge University Press', "Breast (Illustrated Surgical Pathology Series)" and is co-author of the textbook "Breast Imaging and Pathologic Correlations: A Pattern-Based Approach" with his Radiology colleague from Harvard Medical School. He has lectured nationally and internationally on breast pathology and has been Co-Director of two Short Courses on breast pathology at the USCAP. He recently served as Presiding Officer for the Radiology/Pathology Intervention Program at the 100th Annual meeting of RSNA where he was a keynote speaker on high risk lesions of the breast. Dr. Lawton's main research interests involve the diagnosis and management of high risk lesions of the breast (with a particular emphasis on lobular neoplasia), fibroepithelial lesions of the breast, and correlative studies with breast imaging.

Dr. Brian J. Czerniecki is the Mason Chairman of the Department of Breast Oncology at the H Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Professor Emeritus of Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests focus on dendritic cell biology and interactions with T cells. He has developed dendritic cell vaccines for the treatment of breast cancer and is involved with several clinical trials for treating patients with early breast cancer with dendritic cell vaccines. The overall goal is develop vaccines for the prevention of breast cancer and other solid tumors. He is identifying molecular targets in early breast cancer that can be used for prevention of invasion and metastasis. Dr. Czerniecki received his BS in Biochemistry from the University of Maine and MD, PhD from UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson and Rutgers University. He completed his general surgical residency at The Ohio State University and was Surgical Oncology Fellow at the NCI with Dr. Steven Rosenberg prior to his position at the University of Pennsylvania. He rose to full Professor of Surgery at Penn. He has authored over 150 publications and chapters.

Dr. Alaa Abd-Elsayed graduated from Assiut medical school in Egypt in 2000, and joined the faculty at the Department of Public Health and biostatistics immediately after graduation, got his master degree in 2006. He then moved to USA in 2008 to do a clinical research fellowship at the Anesthesiology Department at the Cleveland Clinic. He then joined the Anesthesiology Department at the University of Cincinnati where he had his anesthesiology and Pain Medicine training. In 2014 Dr. Abd-Elsayed joined the Anesthesiology Department at the university of Wisconsin-Madison as an assistant professor. During his career he earned several grants, published more than 60 peer reviewed manuscripts and case reports, several editorials and book chapters. He also had more than 70 international and national presentations at conferences, earned more than 15 awards at the state and national levels. He serves as a reviewer and editor for several journals. His Special interests include Opioids and cancer recurrence, Regional anesthesia in treating pain after breast cancer excision surgery, Multidisciplinary approach for treating breast cancer pain.

Dr. Marc Poirot is first class research director (DR1) at the Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM). He heads the team 'Cholesterol metabolism and therapeutic innovations' (Cancer Research Center of Toulouse, France). Dr. Poirot has skills in medicinal chemistry, biochemistry, cell biology and drug development. He received a PhD in Chemical Biology (1991) from the University of Toulouse (France). He did a post-doc at Sanofi in 1991 before becoming tenured at INSERM. He was visiting scientist from 1993 to 1996 in the laboratory of Dr. Stoney S Simons Jr (NIDDK/NIH, Bethesda, USA) to study steroid hormone receptors. Since then, his research has focused on the elucidation the mechanisms of action of the anti-tumor drug tamoxifen, which led to the definition of the importance of the microsomal anti-estrogen binding site (AEBS) in its pharmacology. This observation led him to study the deregulations of cholesterol metabolism in cancers. His laboratory identified a new metabolic pathway centered on cholesterol oxides that generates the first steroidal alkaloid discovered to date and which displays tumor suppressor properties. His main research interests are the study of deregulations in sterol metabolism in cancers, the identification and the characterization of new sterol metabolites involved in these deregulations, and the determination of their metabolic fate and the determination their molecular mechanisms of action.

Dr. Somdat Mahabir is a Program Director in the Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program's (EGRP) Environmental Epidemiology Branch (EEB) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH). He obtained his PhD from New York University, MPH from New York Medical College and MS from New York Institute of Technology. He also has a Diploma in Cancer Prevention from the NCI where he did his post-doctoral training in Cancer Epidemiology. Prior to joining EGRP in 2009, Dr. Mahabir was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Division of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences, at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Mahabir was also a member of the American Cancer Society's (ACS) Institutional Research Grant (IRG) program and the Clinical, Translational, and Population-Based Research Projects review committees at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Before joining the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, he was a Cancer Prevention Fellow at NCI and a Project Director with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Dr. Mahabir is the recipient of an NCI Cancer Prevention Research Training Merit Award, NCI Director's Award, CDC/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) Honor Award, and academic awards from New York Medical College and New York Institute of Technology. Dr. Mahabir's research interest's include early-life factors and cancer development later in life (childhood and adult cancers), Nutrition, energetics, and other lifestyle factors in cancer epidemiology, Nutraceuticals and cancer, Use of "omics" approaches to understand the links between lifestyle factors and the genome, epigenome, microbiome, and metabolome on cancer prevention, etiology, treatment, and survival, Cancer and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the Caribbean/Latin America.

Prof. Ramon Andrade de Mello is the Chief-Scientific-Officer at the Cearense School of Oncology/Cancer Institute of Ceara, Fortaleza, Brazil and Professor of Department of Medicine of the University of Porto and School of Medicine, University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal. He received MD degree from Federal University of Ceara, Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil; PhD in Oncology (lung cancer) from University of Porto, Portugal. Prof. Ramon De Mello is board certified medical oncologist in Portugal and UK with clinical and scientific interest in lung tumors, targeted therapies and clinical trials design.Prof. Ramon De Mello performs both basic and clinical research on molecular oncology, biomarkers, gastro-intestinal tumors and lung cancer; further, he has an active office working in medical oncology. He is editor of 3 books, author of many scientific articles chapters and comments on basic and clinical research.

Dr. Nicoletta Maounis is Director of the Department of Cytopathology at "Sismanoglio" General Hospital, Athens, Greece and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Drexel University School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA. Dr. Maounis attained her medical and PhD degrees from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and completed her residency training in Cytopathology at the Hellenic Cancer Hospital "Agios Savvas" in Athens, Greece. She also pursued postgraduate training in molecular biology at the Wistar Institute of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Maounis's research interests are centered on correlating cytomorphologic features, DNA image analysis, and immunocytochemical/molecular markers with biological behavior and clinical outcomes in human cancers with emphasis on tumors of the breast and lung. In recent years, her research has focused on alterations of the microtubule cytoskeleton in cancer, in collaboration with Professor Christos D. Katsetos at Drexel University School of Medicine. This line of investigation has brought to light an emerging key role of Gamma-tubulin and Gamma-tubulin complex proteins in diverse tumor types including non-small cell lung cancer and glioblastomas. Results of her research has been presented at national and international conferences and published in peer reviewed journals.

Dr. Maria Elena Sales is a Professor of Pharmacology at University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina; since 1998. And also Principal Investigator at National Research Council of Argentina (CONICET), University of Buenos Aires. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in the University of Buenos Aires at the Pharmacy and Biochemistry School with a specialization in Immunology (1992). In 1993, She obtained her first position as researcher in the National Research Council of Argentina and also as Assistant Professor in the University of Buenos Aires. Dr. Sales research interests include Immunopharmacology-Innate immunology-Oncology-GPCRs and signal transduction.

Dr. Tallal Younis is a Professor of Medicine at Dalhousie University, and a clinician investigator at the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre, in Halifax, Canada. His academic practice is focused on breast cancer, and he is a co-chair of the provincial multidisciplinary breast site team. Dr. Younis received his medical degree from Cairo University in 1992 and an MRCP degree from the UK in 1998. He completed an internal medicine residency in 2001 at Columbia University in New York and a Medical Oncology Fellowship in 2003 at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo. He is board certified (ABIM) in Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology. Dr. Younis is past member of the Pan Canadian Oncology Drug Review – Expert Review Committee (pERC), and the research advisory group of the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer (CPAC). He is a current member of the "Diagnosis and Clinical Care (DCC)” advisory group of the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer (CPAC), and an editor for the medical oncology section of "Current Oncology" journal. Dr. Younis research interests involve health services research and health technology assessments in breast cancer. He has authored and/or co-authored more than a 100 publication and abstracts primarily in the field of health economics research in Breast Cancer.

Dr. Amy H Tang is a Full Professor of Cancer Biology at the Leroy T Canoles Jr. Cancer Research Center at Eastern Virginia Medical School. Dr. Tang had worked as a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery at the Mayo Clinic for eight years, where she witnessed the ineffective treatment regimens, dismal prognosis, and devastation of metastatic breast cancer firsthand. Since then, Dr. Tang has dedicated her scientific life to training her fellows and graduate students to conduct the highest quality research, and finding innovative and breakthrough strategies to control and eradicate locally advanced, relapsed and metastatic triple negative breast cancer in our lifetimes. At EVMS, Dr. Tang has served as a lead cancer researcher who received a top national cancer award, the 2010 AACR Innovative Award, for her innovative idea and new strategy to control and eradicate “undruggable” oncogenic K-RAS-driven human cancer. Dr. Tang and her team have developed an innovative strategy to control metastatic breast cancer in preclinical and clinical settings, and she hopes to translate these findings to benefit high-risk and high-grade breast cancer patients and address cancer disparity issues in Virginia and in the United States.

Dr. Ming Tan is an Associate Professor, Chief of Center for Cell Death and Metabolism, and an Endowed Kilborn Scholar at Mitchell Cancer Institute, University of South Alabama. Upon earning his Ph.D. degree in cancer biology from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2000, Dr. Tan continued his research on the mechanisms of oncogene-induced cancer progression and therapeutic resistance. He joined the faculty at Mitchell Cancer Institute at the University of South Alabama in 2007, where he conducted research on metabolism and cancer, mechanism of cancer cell therapeutic resistance, invasion and metastasis, and microRNA in cancer development and targeted cancer therapy.

Dr. Jay Vadgama is a Vice President for Research and Health Affairs at the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science (CDU). He is a Full Professor of Medicine at CDU and at the David Geffen UCLA School of Medicine in the Department(s) of Internal Medicine. Dr. Vadgama is the Chief of the Division of Cancer Research and Training; Director for Center to Eliminate Cancer Health Disparities; and Director of Molecular Oncology Program in the Department of Internal Medicine at CDU. Dr. Vadgama holds Endowed Chair for Cancer Research, and is the Director of the Cancer Cluster at CDU. He is a Principal Investigator of two of the largest center grants at CDU. He is also PI and Co-Investigator on several other projects. His academic career is in the area of Health Disparities and in particular oncology, basic, clinical and translational areas.Research programs in his division focus on: 1) Genetics and epigenetics; 2) Identification of cellular/molecular markers, and novel genes for early detection, prevention and management of breast, colorectal cancer, and prostate cancers; 3) Mechanisms associated with bone metastasis from breast cancer; 4) Role of mismatch repair proteins and microsatellite instability in colorectal cancer in underrepresented populations; 5) Identification and characterization of normal and cancer stem cells in breast and prostate cancers that contribute to drug resistance; 6) Cancer outreach and prevention studies.

Dr. Lopamudra Das Roy is a Director of Research and is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at UNC, Charlotte, USA. Dr. Roy received her Doctoral Degree in Genetics from India. She did her Post doctoral fellowship from Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Scottsdale, United States of America. She moved to University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC) as Post-Doctoral Research Associate. She was a Research Assistant Professor at UNCC from October 2010 to 2012. She joined OncoTAb Inc in November 2012 as a Research Director. She is a proficient accomplished Cancer researcher with special focus on Breast and Pancreatic cancer research. Dr. Roy has more than 13 years of research, teaching and end to end scientific research experience in both academics as well as industry. Dr. Roy work on discovering the link between arthritis and breast cancer metastasis was identified as Newsworthy for the AACR Annual Meeting 2012, held in Chicago. Dr. Roy is a scientific reviewer for grants and proposals for US Department of Defense and several renowned scientific journals. As a Director of Research in OncoTab Inc, Dr. Roy developed a novel antibody-based blood test to detect breast cancer. She also worked on hundreds of human sera, human breast cancer tissues and several human breast cancer cell lines to evaluate the detection of the target protein and is also generating tumor targeted therapy with the OncoTAb antibody. Dr. Roy's research interests include Breast Cancer and Inflammation, Breast Cancer and Metastasis, Breast Cancer and Arthritis, Pancreatic Cancer, Antibody based targeted therapy.

Dr. Shailendra Verma is a Medical Oncologist at the Ottawa Hospital Cancer Centre (TOHCC), an Associate Professor with the University of Ottawa's Department of Medicine and an Adjunct Research Professor in the Institute of Neuroscience at Carleton University. He has specialized practice in breast cancer, melanoma, sarcoma. Dr. Verma chairs the disease site groups in each of these areas at the University of Ottawa, and is chair or a member of these groups at the provincial level and Chair of TSIG/GIST - Eastern Ontario. Dr. Verma is Vice Chair of the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation (Ontario Chapter), a member of the Board and Chair of its grant panels and several of its committees and a committed advocate on behalf of policy, research and treatment issues as they relate to breast cancer. Dr. Verma is a principal investigator in numerous research and educational projects at TOHCC and the Ottawa Regional Women's Breast Health Centre.

Dr. Imran H Khan is an Associate Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at University of California, Davis, USA. Dr. Khan obtained his Ph.D (1988-1993) from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, USA. His research program has focused on signaling pathways in cancer cells, and infectious diseases using molecular biology approaches for over 15 years. Dr. Khan has developed highly efficient and high throughput multiplex approaches for disease biomarker studies and used these systems for translational research. Dr. Khan's research includes simultaneous analysis of multiple key components of cell signaling pathways in a single reaction vessel. In addition, he has employed novel approaches to study disease-related biomarkers (e.g., immune biomarkers) in bodily fluids (e.g., plasma/serum) by combining the power of multiplexing systems and computational modeling. Results of his research have been published in peer reviewed journals and encompass the development of novel methods for biomarker profiling in cancer/inflammatory diseases and infectious diseases, and computational methods for large volume data analysis.

Dr. Dennis Citrin is a board certified medical oncologist with more than three decades of experience. Specializing in treating advanced and complex breast cancer. Dr. Citrin works with a team of experts to help patients fight breast cancer at Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) at Midwestern Regional Medical Center. Dr. Citrin earned a Bachelor of Medicine degree (MB), which is equivalent to a medical degree (MD), from the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He then completed a residency in internal medicine at the university. Following his residency, he completed three years of breast cancer research, leading to a PhD. Dr. Citrin was then awarded a Medical Research Council fellowship in cancer medicine, which brought him to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he completed a fellowship in human oncology. Dr. Citrin is a member of several professional associations, including the American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Association for Cancer Research and the Chicago Medical Society. His research has been presented at numerous national and international conferences, and has been published extensively in journals such as Cancer and the Journal of Clinical Oncology. He is also the author of "Knowledge is Power: What Every Woman Should Know About Breast Cancer" which breaks down the facts about the many types of breast cancer, complemented with real stories from patients who treated under his care at CTCA at Midwestern. Dr. Citrin has Special Expertise in Bone Cancer, Breast Cancer, Metastatic Breast Cancer, Glandular Cancer and Prostate Cancer.

Dr. Wael M. ElShamy graduated from the Department of Chemistry in Ayn-Shams University, Egypt in 1986. He later obtained two master degrees in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Stockholm University, Sweden and a Ph.D. in Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics from Royal Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. In 1998, he moved to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School for a Postdoctoral fellowship and later became an instructor in Harvard Medical School. He is Dr. Lawrence and Mrs. Bo Hing chan Tseu American Cancer Society Research Scholar. In 2011, Dr. ElShamy became the Director of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics program, Cancer institute, University of Mississippi Medical Center. He is a Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on several grants. Dr. ElShamy’ s interests encompass basic, clinical and translational cancer research. Research programs in his laboratory and program focus on identifying and improve treatments for breast and ovarian cancers, especially metastatic diseases, development of novel drug delivery techniques and identifying diagnostic as well as prognostic molecular biomarkers for these diseases. In his laboratory, the main focus is identifying the earliest disease lesions, and the development of targeted therapies for cancer stem cells.

Dr. Ian Craig Bennett is a Breast and Endocrine Surgeon in Brisbane, Australia, who is currently the Chairman of the Breast and Endocrine Surgical Unit at Princess Alexandra Hospital and the Surgical Director of the Family History Clinic at the North Brisbane BreastScreen Queensland Service. He is a current member of a number of quality assurance committees for BreastScreen Queensland and is on the Accreditation Board for the Australian Society of Ultrasound in Medicine for the Certificate of Clinical Performed Ultrasound (CCPU). He is an Associate Professor in Surgery at University of Queensland and is a recent former Councillor of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (2010-2016) during which time he was the Chairman of the Research Audit and Academic Surgery Committee. He holds membership with a number of national and international breast and endocrine societies. Associate Professor Bennett is involved in collaborative clinically based research at the Translational Research Institute Australia at Princess Alexandra Hospital. He has more than 50 publications in scientific medical journals and has particular research interests in the investigation of infective causes of breast cancer, surgeon-performed ultrasound, ultrasound guided excision of impalpable breast lesions and the management of women at high risk of familial breast cancer.

Dr. Dezso Toth is an Associate Professor in the Department of General Surgery at the Kenezy Teaching Hospital in Debrecen, Hungary. He is a founder member of the County's Breast Center. He graduated from University of Debrecen, Medical School in 1997 and in Medical Economics in 2001. He is certified in General Surgery and Clinical Oncology and he received his Ph.D. from University of Debrecen, Medical and Health Science Center: "Examination of lymph node involvement in solid neoplasms – Sentinel lymph node biopsy" with summa cum laude in 2012. Dr. Toth's research areas include surgical oncology, especially in the field of gastric and breast cancer. He is author and co-author of over 20 peer-reviewed publications (original article, review, chapter and case reports) published in prestigious scientific journals, such as Gastric Cancer, The Breast, Molecular Cancer, Pathology and Oncology Research and World Journal of Gastrointestinal Oncology.

Dr. G. Hossein Ashrafi obtained his PhD from Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, University of Glasgow in 1998 where he worked on viral causes of cancer. In the same year he was offered a postdoctoral fellowship in the Medical Oncology Laboratory at Glasgow University’s Medical School, he was awarded a Royal Society Developing World Study Visit fellowship for distinguished postdoctoral work on relationship between papillomavirus and immune response. Dr. Ashrafi joined Kingston University, London in 2009 where he currently act as course director for cancer biology and teach on a range of medical Science modules, supervise undergraduate and postgraduate research students, and lead an active research group on the interactions between the human host, pathogen and the immune system. His research mainly focuses on Association of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) and Cancers (Breast, Cervical, and Oesophagus), Therapeutic approaches towards HPV related cancers, Inhibition of immune system through Human papillomavirus (HPV) E5 protein, Association of Varizella-Zoster-Virus (VZV) gene ORF 1 and host immune response.

Dr. Dorota Bartusik-Aebisher is a Adjunct Professor of Biology and Chemistry Department at Southern Polytechnic State University, Marietta, USA. She completed her Ph.D. at the Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland. She obtained a habilitation degree in medical sciences in medical biology (Warsaw Medical University, Warsaw, Poland). Her primary research interest is HER2-Positive Breast Cancer, drug design and molecular imaging applied to monitoring of drug delivery and drug efficiency. The objective of her research is to develop preclinical model drug delivery systems using Trastuzumab as a model drug for treatment and visualization at the cellular level. Her project focuses on 19F labeling of Trastuzumab and in vitro evaluation of the conjugates. The in vitro cancer model is based on three dimensional (3D) cell culture systems. Dr. Dorota is coauthor of 45 research papers and 7 book chapters related to drug design and medical biology. She is currently exploring innovative applications of Multinuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Spectroscopy (MRS) for studying the therapeutic efficacy of breast cancer drugs.

Dr. Marcia Regina Cominetti is an Associate Professor in Department of Gerontology at the Federal University of Sao Carlos and is head at Laboratory of Biology of Aging. Dr. Cominetti received her PhD from the University of Sao Carlos and performed part of her doctorate at the University of Virginia Health System. She also performed a postdoctoral stage at the Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM, Paris, France). Dr. Cominetti has been dedicated to basic and translational investigation on cancer research. The central focus of her research is to verify the effects of natural and synthetic molecules on tumor cell proliferation emphasizing the molecular mechanisms underlying these effects, both in vitro and in vivo. Dr. Cominetti is author and co-author of more than 40 peer-reviewed publications (original articles, reviews, book chapters and patents of innovation) published in important scientific journals in the field of cancer research. Dr. Cominetti's research interest is on Biology of cancer which include Small molecule drug screening; Cell motility, adhesion and metastasis; Developmental models of cancer; Mitochondrial function and apoptosis; Metabolism and growth control; Cell cycle; Cytoskeleton and membrane trafficking.