Dr Priscilla Brastianos is director of the Central Nervous System Metastasis Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and leads a multi-R01-funded laboratory. Her research focuses on understanding the genomic mechanisms that drive primary and metastatic brain tumours and she has lead studies which have identified novel therapeutic targets in brain tumours.
Dr Priscilla Brastianos completed her medical school and internal medicine residency at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and fellowship training in hematology / oncology and neuro-oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital. She has more than 145 scientific publications and has translated her scientific findings to national multi-center trials. She also leads a multidisciplinary Central Nervous System Metastasis Clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School. She has received a number of awards for her work including ‘NextGen Star’ award by the American Association for Cancer Research, Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award, Breast Cancer Research Foundation Award, Susan G. Komen Career Catalyst Award, American Brain Tumor Association Joel Gingras Award, and Anne Klibanski Award for Excellence in Mentorship.
Dr John de Groot is Division Chief of the Neuro-Oncology Division within the Department of Neurological Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He is a neuro-oncologist with extensive clinical and translational research experience in the field of glioma, angiogenesis, molecularly targeted therapy, and immunotherapy.
Prior to joining UCSF, Dr de Groot was based at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX, where he was co-leader of the GBM Moonshot Program. He has authored over 135 peer-reviewed publications, has been the principal investigator of 44 clinical trials, a collaborator on a further 78 clinical trials, and has been a recipient of multiple NCI, CPRIT, NBTS, and industry-sponsored grants. He has also served as a peer reviewer for 23 scientific journals, and sits on four editorial review boards, as well as occupying several leadership positions within the Society for Neuro-Oncology (SNO).
Dr Alan Olivero is a consultant specialising in drug discovery and development. In 2018 he retired from Genentech, Inc., where he worked for 25 years, rising to the level of Senior Director, of Discovery Chemistry and Head of Research Operations. During his time at Genentech, he oversaw much of the medicinal chemistry conducted at Genentech, led research teams for eight clinical candidates and, as Head of Research Operations, additionally oversaw the company’s research budget, headcount, and research facilities.
Dr Olivero is an expert on intracellular signalling pathways and was the team leader for Genentech’s PI3K franchise. He has a specialist interest in brain cancer and is a coinventor of paxalisib (formally GDC-0084). He led the early development of paxalisib and was responsible for bringing the drug into human trials.
Dr. Olivero has a BS degree in chemistry from Stanford University, completed postgraduate work in synthetic organic chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), and received his PhD in organic chemistry from Stanford University in 1988. He has co-authored numerous scientific publications and is a named inventor on over 40 patents.
Dr Patrick Y. Wen is Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Center for Neuro-Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. His research interests include novel therapeutics for brain tumors, as well as innovative clinical trial designs, and response assessment and endpoints in clinical trials.
Dr Wen was the President of the Society for Neuro-Oncology (SNO) from 2017-2019. He was formerly the Editor-in-Chief of Neuro-Oncology, and is currently SNO Executive Editor of Neuro-Oncology. He is also a steering committee member of the Response Assessment in Neuro-Oncology (RANO) Working Group and co-chairs the Agents Selection Committee of the GBM-AGILE trial.
After receiving his medical degree from the Medical College of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, University of London, Dr Wen underwent residency training at Harvard Longwood Neurology Training Program, and completed his clinical and research fellowship in neurology at the Center for Neurologic Diseases, Brigham and Women's Hospital, in Boston, Massachusetts.
