Scientific Advisory Board

Peter K. Sorger, Ph.D. is a Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School and holds a joint appointment in MIT’s Dept. of Biological Engineering and Center for Cancer Research. A former Marshall and Markey scholar, he holds an A.B, from Harvard College and Ph.D. from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and Trinity College, Cambridge, UK. Dr. Sorger’s lab consists of 26 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staff scientists involved in both computational and experimental biology. One of the long term goals of the lab’s research is to identify molecular lesions that cause genomic instability and promote tumorigenesis, to determine their frequency in normal and cancerous cells and to develop improved means to kill diseased tissues. A second goal in the Sorger Lab is to understand the pathways of mammalian cell signaling from a systems – rather than a component by component – perspective. Dr. Sorger has published over 70 scientific papers and holds several patents. Co-founder and first Director of the MIT Computational and Systems Biology Program (CSBi), Dr. Sorger is also a member of the Broad Institute, the MIT Center for Cancer Research and the Board of Directors of Applied Precision, LLC.

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Christopher Benz, M.D. joined the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in 2000 as a founding faculty member, Professor and Director of its Cancer and Developmental Therapeutics Program. Dr. Benz is also a practicing oncologist at UCSF’s Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center, and a senior member of the UCSF Cancer Center’s Breast Oncology Program, with faculty appointment in UCSF’s Department of Medicine and Division of Hematology/Oncology since 1983. For more than 25 years, Dr. Benz has worked to develop new treatment approaches that rely less on chemotherapy and more on hormonal agents and novel therapeutics that target specific cancer-causing mechanisms, including oncogene pathways and growth factor receptors associated with breast cancer development and progression. Dr. Benz obtained his medical degree from the University of Michigan in 1972, performed his internship and residency in Vancouver, British Columbia (University of British Columbia), and subsequently received his advanced postdoctoral training and subspecialty certification in Medical Oncology at Yale University.

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Douglas A. Lauffenburger, Ph.D. is Uncas & Helen Whitaker Professor of Bioengineering and Director of the Biological Engineering Division at MIT, and also holds appointments in the Department of Biology and the Department of Chemical Engineering. Dr. Lauffenburger’s BS and PhD degrees are in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois and the University of Minnesota, in 1975 and 1979 respectively. His major research interests are in cell engineering: the fusion of engineering with molecular cell biology. A central focus of his research program is in receptor-mediated cell communication and intracellular signal transduction, with emphasis on development of predictive computational models derived from quantitative experimental studies, for cell cue/signal/response relationships important in pathophysiology with application to drug discovery and development.

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James D. Marks, M.D., Ph.D. is Director of the Medical-Surgical Intensive Care Unit, San Francisco General Hospital and Professor of Anesthesia and Pharmaceutical Chemistry at University of California, San Francisco. He holds a Ph.D. from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK on the making of human antibody fragments in bacteria and bacteriophage. His research interests include the development of phage display technology for production of human antibodies and the development of techniques for increasing antibody affinity. He has published more than 75 scientific papers and acts as a referee for top-ranking international journals including Nature Biotechnology, Nature Medicine, Journal of Molecular Biology, Gene, Blood, and Human Antibodies and Hybridomas. Dr. Marks is the co-inventor on 4 major phage display patents.

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John W. Park, M.D. is Director of Novel Therapeutics in Breast Oncology and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Park is also Co-Principal Investigator of the UCSF Breast Cancer SPORE program and Principal Investigator in the UCSF Neuro-Oncology Program. Dr. Park’s laboratory develops novel nanoparticle-based cancer treatments and new molecular and cellular biomarkers. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Park has extensive experience in biotechnology and drug development. Dr. Park was a postdoctoral fellow and Visiting Scientist at Genentech, Inc. from 1990 to 1995, where his research involved studies of heregulin, HER2, and the anti-HER2 monoclonal antibody trastuzumab (Herceptin®). Dr. Park was a co-founder and President/CEO of Hermes Biosciences, Inc. until its merger with Merrimack.

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Barrett Rollins, M.D., Ph.D. is a Chief Scientific Officer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Rollins received his MD in 1979 and PhD in 1980 from Case Western Reserve University and completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at Beth Israel Hospital, Boston. He served a clinical fellowship in medical oncology at DFCI and a postdoctoral research fellowship with Dr. Charles Stiles. Since joining DFCI in 1989, Dr. Rollins has worked in the area of white blood cell trafficking and maintained a clinical interest in lung cancer.

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Louis Weiner, M.D. joined Fox Chase Cancer Center in 1984. Since 1994 he has been Chairman, Department of Medical Oncology, and has been a Senior Member in the Division of Medical Sciences at Fox Chase Cancer Center since 1995. In 2002 he was named the G. Morris Dorrance Jr. Endowed Chair in Medical Science, and was appointed as Fox Chase’s first Vice President for Translational Research. Dr. Weiner’s research centers on the use of antibody-based molecules to target tumors, with emphasis on understanding the principles of tumor targeting, and the use of antibodies to initiate host immune-mediated tumor lysis. Dr. Weiner received a B.A. with Honors in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973, and the M.D. from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1977.

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Michael Yaffe, M.D., Ph.D. is a Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at MIT’s Center for Cancer Research. His research focuses on the regulation of cell signal transduction systems relevant to inflammation and human cancer. Dr. Yaffe has concentrated on identifying novel modular domains that control the assembly of multi-protein signaling complexes, and in the development of bioinformatics tools for analyzing proteomic data. Dr. Yaffe received his M.D. in 1989 and a Ph.D. in Biophysical Chemistry in 1987 from Case Western Reserve University.

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