From left to right:
Front: David Lonner, Diane Duhl, Stacy Valner, Laurie McCartney, Julie Sachse, Tia Palermo & Ed Sachse
Back: Ken Ramberg, Alberto Valner, Cary Meadow, Steven Romick & Mark Freeman Not Pictured: Jonathan Roth

Robert Figlin, M.D. F.A.C.P. Dr. Robert Figlin is Professor of Medicine and Urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and holds the Henry Alvin and Carrie L. Meinhardt Chair in Urologic Oncology at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. A Senior Investigator in Translational Research with more than 20 years of expertise in designing and conducting clinical trials in lung and kidney cancer, Dr. Figlin is the Co-Principal Investigator of the UCLA Lung Cancer SPORE and directs its Clinical Core; Co-Principal Investigator and Director of the Clinical Core for the NCI funded phase III chemoprevention trial, investigating green tea phenol extract, erlotonib, an EGFR receptor antagonist, and placebo, in superficial bladder cancer; and Co-Director of the Genito Urinary Oncology Program in the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Figlin has performed clinical investigations as a Principal Investigator in phase I, II, and III trials focusing on cell, immune, genetic, and target based therapy in solid tumor oncology. His major oncologic focus is in the area of thoracic and genitourinary tumors. He is the former Principal Investigator for the UCLA Southwest Oncology Group, serves on the Advisory Board of the UCLA K30 Program, is the current Chairman of the UCLA Medical IRB, and serves on the institution's Human Research Policy Board. He previously acted as Chairman of the General Clinical Research Center advisory board. Dr. Figlin served for 10 years as the Director of the UCLA Hematology/Oncology Fellowship Program until stepping down in 2004. He is a Scientific Founder of Agensys, a California biotechnology company focusing on targeted therapy of cancer. He serves as a reviewer on numerous journals, has published over 180 peer reviewed articles, 40 book chapters, and recently published as editor a book entitled Renal and Adrenal tumors.

Jeffrey S. Weber, M.D., Ph.D. Dr. Jeffrey Weber is Professor of Medicine and Microbiology/Immunology at the Keck School of Medicine and is Associate Director for Clinical Research of the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is an experienced clinical trialist in the field of immunotherapy of cancer, and has conducted research in the fields of melanoma vaccine development and vaccines for HPV diseases. He is also chief of the division of Medical Oncology at the Keck School. His work has centered around the generation of immune responses directed toward specific antigens encoded by melanoma cells, the use of novel adjuvants for augmenting vaccine responses in cancer patients, and the definition of factors that affect how cancer patients respond to vaccinations. He runs a lab and has a significant effort in clinical trials, chiefly in melanoma. He has been continuously funded by the NCI to perform trials in melanoma for the last decade after leaving the National Cancer Institute.

Lee S. Rosen, M.D. Dr. Lee Rosen directs the Developmental Therapeutics Program at the John Wayne Cancer Institute and Premiere Oncology in Santa Monica, California. He was formerly an Assistant Professor in the Division of Hematology-Oncology, Department of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he founded the Cancer Therapy Development Program. Dr. Rosen received his Medical Degree from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, his B.A. in English Literature from Yale University and Masters of Public Policy (M.P.P.) from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Dr. Rosen is the principal investigator of many clinical trials that focus on new cancer drug development (phase I), particularly the treatment of gastrointestinal malignancies. He is also involved in translational projects with angiogenesis inhibitors, signal transduction inhibitors and new drug combinations. His work with angiogenesis inhibitors goes back to 1996 and he has since treated over 400 patients with nearly a dozen drugs in this class. The author of several papers, review articles and abstracts, he always serves as an occasional reviewer for the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and Clinical Cancer Research, among others.

Stephen J. Forman, M.D. Dr. Stephen Forman has been Chair, Division of Hematology and Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, City of Hope National Medical Center and Program Director, Hematologic Neoplasia, City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center since 1987. He first joined City of Hope in 1979 after completing a fellowship there. He did his undergraduate studies at St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland and attended medical school at the University of Southern California In addition to serving on the Phase One Medical Advisory Board, he is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Cure for Lymphoma Foundation, a member of the Scientific Subcommittee of Transplant Biology for The American Society of Hematology, Chairman of the Marrow and Stem Cell Committee for the Southwest Oncology Group, and a member of the Gene Therapy Advisory Council, City of Hope and Beckman Research Institute.

Philip H. Koeffler, M.D. Dr. Philip Koeffler is a Professor of Medicine at UCLA School of Medicine and is Director of the Division of Hematology/Oncology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He did his undergraduate training at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and then attended Baylor College of Medicine for Medical School Training. He completed his internship and residency at the University of Southern California, and his fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at UCLA. He went through the professorial ranks from Assistant Professor to Full Professor at UCLA from 1978 to 1986, and in 1992, he moved his laboratory to a large research area at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He has over 600 peer-reviewed scientific articles published or in press and over 75 chapters in medical scientific books. Dr. Koeffler uses cellular and molecular biology to ask cancer-related questions. He has large tissue banks for many different cancers including brain, breast, lung and leukemias and lymphomas. He has well over 100 different cancer cell lines frozen viably and at any one time perhaps 30 of these cell lines are growing in the laboratory. In addition, he frequently uses mice (nude, transgenic, and deletional). Some of his major accomplishments include: being the first lab to identify p53 to be mutated in human cancer; being one of three labs to identify p53 as a transcription factor; developing one of the first human myeloid leukemia cell lines (KG-1) which has over the years has become a model to study leukemia (these cells were used to clone, for the first time, the alpha interferon gene and to make the CD34 antibody which has been used to purify hematopoietic stem cells); being first to develop a cell line (KS-1) infected with Karposi's Sarcoma associated virus (HHV-8), but not infected with either Epstein Barr Virus or human immunodeficiency virus; being first to clone cyclin A1, a protein involved in cell cycle progression and performing experiments to understand the protein's biology; being first to clone and study transferrin-2 and receiving a patent on various aspects of this protein which is important in iron metabolism, and if mutated, causes hemachromatosis; being first to clone a myeloid transcription factor known as C/EBP, a protein critical for myeloid (white) cell development (Dr. Koeffler's lab was one of two labs to first identify the genetic abnormality in patients with "Specific Granule Deficiency" disease - germline mutation of C/EBPand one of two labs first to identify mutations in C/EBP in acute myelogenous leukemia. He also noted that the gene was silenced in a number of other cancer subtypes, a discovery that lends itself to become a therapeutic target).

Frank L. Meyskens, Jr., M.D., F.A.C.P. Dr. Frank Meyskens is Professor of Medicine and Biological Chemistry, Director of the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Senior Associate/Dean of Health Sciences for the College of Health Science at UC Irvine. He was originally recruited to UC Irvine in 1989 as Professor of Medicine and Biological Chemistry and to serve as Medical Director of Oncology Services and Chief of Hematology/Oncology with the mandate to develop a Cancer Center. He received his M.D. and interned at the University of California, San Francisco, and completed his Medical Oncology training at the National Institutes of Health, during which time he conducted molecular biology investigations in the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology. Since 1977, he has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health. Prior to UCI, Dr. Meyskens was at the Arizona Cancer Center at the University of Arizona where he served as Associate Director of Cancer Prevention and Control, from 1984 to 1989, and established one of the most successful Cancer Prevention Research Programs in the world. While at Arizona, he was Principal Investigator of the Vitamin A and Chemoprevention Program Project (PO1 CA 27502) and the PO1 CA41108 Program Project for the study of colon cancer and prevention. He has established a similar chemopreventive effort at UCI and is conducting phase I, II, III and IV chemopreventive trials supported by the NCI and NIH. His current major efforts also include accrual to a phase IIb trial of Bowman-Birk Inhibitor in oral leukoplakia, a phase IIb/III cohort of patients at risk for colon polyps treated with DFMO plus sulindac versus placebo, and a unique natural history, epidemiology and chemoprevention study of patients at high risk of prostate cancer based on familial background. All studies have extensive translational components and are funded by the National Cancer Institute. Additionally, for over 25 years he has conducted active clinical and laboratory research into the cellular and molecular mechanisms of transformation of human melanocyte and melanoma cells and he is recognized as one of the premier clinical and experimental oncologists concerned with melanoma.