Meet-the-Expert Lunch • Nov. 7, 2019

Thursday, Nov. 7, 2019
12:00–1:00 p.m.

*This program is organized by members of SITC’s Early Career Scientist Committee.

Program Purpose

The Meet-the-Expert Lunch will focus on unique issues related to early career scientist career development and will give the opportunity to attendees to interact with experts in key fields of immunotherapy. Information will be provided on different relevant topics in a setting that fosters attendee/expert interactions and provides networking opportunities with leaders in the field. Experts will answer questions and lead informal dialogue during a one-hour roundtable lunch to help provide guidance and direction.

Intended Audience

The audience for this educational program includes graduate, medical, and post-baccalaureate students; clinical fellows; post-doctoral fellows; tenure-track investigators, government employees, and scientists in general; and industry/pharma scientists and employees. Space for this event is limited and priority will be given to early career scientists.

Meet-the-Expert Lunch Organizers

  • Sarah E. Church, PhD – NanoString Technologies
  • Ravi Patel, MD, PhD – University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Jessica Thaxton, PhD, MSCR – Medical University of South Carolina
  • Dario A. A. Vignali, PhD – University of Pittsburgh
  • Spencer C. Wei, PhD – Spotlight Therapeutics

Educational Objectives

Upon completion of this meeting, participants will be able to:

  • Address most of their open questions and concerns on the selected topic
  • Make informed decisions about their career development and research projects
  • Establish connections with experts in their field of interest

Topics

  • Basic -Translational Research in Immunology
    • Anna Wu, PhD – City of Hope
    • Zihai Li, MD, PhD –The Ohio State University
  • Clinical -Translational Research in Immunology with Focus on Medical Students and Medical Residents
    • Joshua Brody, MD – Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
  • Clinical -Translational Research in Immunology with Focus on Fellows and Early Career Clinicians
    • David McDermott, MD – Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
  • Partnering and Collaborating with Industry
    • Lazslo Radvanyi, PhD – Ontario Institute for Cancer Research
  • Networking: Gaining a Network and Leveraging Support
    • Tullia Bruno, PhD – University of Pittsburgh
  • Career Path: The Big Pharma Industry Perspective
    • Edward Cha, MD, PhD – Genentech
  • Career Path: The Small Biotech Industry Perspective
    • Thomas Dubensky, PhD – Tempest Therapeutics

Schedule At-a-Glance

Faculy Question and Answer

Learn why you should attend this program! Continue reading the following Q&As as program faculty talk about their professional experiences and the valuable discussions that will occur during the lunch.

Joshua Brody, MD

Joshua_Brody_Faculty.jpgPlease provide a brief biography of your career and explain the position you currently hold.

I am the Director of the Lymphoma Immunotherapy Program at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, having joined the faculty here in 2012. Previously I worked as a member of the Levy Lab at Stanford after completing my medical fellowship there.

What does a normal work week look like for you?

My time is fairly split between:
Science - we have a lab filled with brilliant post-doctoral scientists, graduate students, and research associates conducting wonderful and bizarre translational and basic science all focused on understanding and improving anti-tumor immune responses. Clinical Trials - along with a team of doctors, research nurses, coordinators, developing and running investigator-initiated trials and implementing industry-initiated trials for our patients with lymphoid malignancies as well as solid tumors. Medicine - with clinical fellows, NPs and nurses, we take care of patients with lymphomas and CLL (primarily) in our clinic and (sometimes) on the inpatient service.

All in all, I work with a LOT of people. So, I have delivery birthday cake bakeries on my speed dial. And a lot of minutes.

What do you enjoy about your career now, and is there anything you wish you would have done differently during your career path?

Whether or not we cure cancer... it is an immeasurable privilege to at least have the chance to TRY. If we succeed, yes, that would be even better.

Regarding having done things differently: I shamelessly train grad students to obtain their PhD's even though I do not have one myself. If I could go back and do things again, still, I would do things the same way.

What topics you would like to cover at your table?

"How to get the most productive post-doctoral fellowship" and Translational clinical trial design.

Tullia Bruno, PhD

Bruno__Tullia.gifWhat does a normal work week look like for you?

A normal work week consists of meetings about research projects; 1-1 meetings with students, postdocs and fellows; in lab training of lab personnel if necessary; writing grants and manuscripts; and reading new literature. I also spend a 1/2 day a week on administrative responsibilities.

What do you enjoy about your career now, and is there anything you wish you would have done differently during your career path?

I really enjoy mentoring, reading, and writing. I love doing science and discussing new experiments/ideas. If I could go back, I would have thought further about my postdoc choice. In the end, it worked out, but it was a non-traditional path.

What topics you would like to cover at your table?

Topics I am comfortable covering: Mentoring vs. managing individuals in the lab, choosing a successful postdoc, taking a non-traditional path to a tenure stream faculty position, the power of networking, effective science communication.

Edward Cha, MD, PhD

Edward_Cha_Faculty.pngWhat does a normal work week look like for you?

My week starts with the review of various projects and studies with a team of medical directors, clinical scientists and project managers. These meetings involve numerous aspects of clinical development, including setting objectives and expectations for any given study, from Phase 1 to Phase 3; directing interactions with external agencies both at a national and at a site level; overseeing internal processes; coordination of strategies with medical affairs; and other responsibilities, such as publications. I also continue to monitor a few clinical studies. I discuss ongoing strategies and studies with clinical and laboratory investigators on a weekly to monthly basis. In addition, in my role as a scientific lead for a number of clinical collaborations, I engage with multiple companies to evaluate new opportunities for partnerships. My role demands that I connect across the globe with multiple functions to ensure progress for all initiatives and studies.

What do you enjoy about your career now, and is there anything you wish you would have done differently during your career path?

I love working in immunotherapy, and my career allows me to do that today. What I've enjoyed the most is seeing development from a global perspective and with highly functional teams. If I could have done one thing differently, I would have tried to find out more about industry opportunities earlier in my training.

What topics you would like to cover at your table?

Career opportunities in clinical drug development, early stage vs late stage development.

Thomas Dubensky, PhD

Thomas_Dubensky_Faculty.jpgWhat does a normal work week look like for you?

The principal role of the CEO of a start-up biotech company is to increase value to existing investors and secure funding for additional rounds of financing. Increasing value is based largely on clinical progress. My work week (24/7) is predominantly guided through a lens of guiding/understanding internal progress on programs and conveying this information to existing investors (board members) and pursuing relationships with possible future investors, including Pharma, Biotech and Venture that will collectively result in financing the company through significant clinical readouts. I also spend significant time managing internal culture and communication to (hopefully) result in a company whose employees are committed to a common mission of rigorous science and medicine that will best favor positive outcome of experimental drugs in development.

What do you enjoy about your career now, and is there anything you wish you would have done differently during your career path?

I most enjoy having the opportunity to have ultimate responsibility for the success or failure of the company. I’ve tried to learn from the strengths and weaknesses of my previous academic and biotech bosses, as well from other academic and biotech/pharma colleagues/mentors of mine to put me in the best position to navigate the company. I specifically wanted to focus on science in my career, and I view my current role of leading a company to simply be a capstone.

What topics you would like to cover at your table?

I think that the discussion would be most robust by touching on the following topics:

  1. Trade-offs of working in industry vs academia (though now a bit of an anachronistic topic)
  2. Should I pursue start-up/small biotech, large biotech or Pharma—what are the differences?
  3. Do I always want to have a science-focused role, or do I want to learn development and translation?
  4. The science-side vs the business-side of biotech—what are the opportunities and rationale for considering either of them?
  5. Stability—do I want to focus on a principal area in my career or am I comfortable with changing jobs to facilitate career development?

Lazslo Radvanyi, PhD

u6bQfykOQgxbZoBJyl2u_temp-T.jpg

What does a normal work week look like for you?

Many meetings and giving talks on multiple topics on running a 400-person integrated cancer research institute with more than $72 million in annual funding.

What do you enjoy about your career now, and is there anything you wish you would have done differently during your career path?

I love my job, plain and simple. It is the ultimate culmination of my career in academia, biotech, and pharma. Now I have come back into an academic environment to lead one of Canada's largest cancer research institutes that also has an important translational research mandate.

What topics you would like to cover at your table?

  1. What pharma is really looking for in an academic collaboration/partnership; current pharma priorities.
  2. Approaches and types of pharma relationships.
  3. How to engage pharma and keep them interested in you and your research.
  4. The critical importance of high quality data; solid data that is validated; not jumping the gun with pharma engagement before your data packages are solid
  5. Overall issues with drug development in the current climate – climbing costs, climbing complications of precision medicine in drug development: is the current model of pharma drug development breaking down? What unique things can academia do to offer solutions?
  6. Data sharing questions and issues with pharma collaborations and pre-competitive consortia; models that can work, such as the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) open science approaches.
  7. Thinking of a pharma transition? When and how – timing is everything.


Anna Wu, PhD
Ann_Wu_Faculty.jpg

What does a normal work week look like for you?
A mix of research meetings with collaborators, administrative meetings and tasks, discussions with members of my research group, and entirely too little time for reading the literature and writing grants!

What do you enjoy about your career now, and is there anything you wish you would have done differently during your career path?

My recent move back to the City of Hope provides the opportunity to get much more directly involved with clinical trials. Sometimes I think I should have gotten an MD along with my PhD but I managed to get to this place regardless. Alternatively, an MBA would be very handy!

What topics you would like to cover at your table?
Promise, perils and pitfalls of trying to translate your ideas from bench to bedside.