Genomic Tumor Boards

Professor Ashley’s career in cancer research at Duke University’s Cancer Institute dates more than two decades. He is credentialed in both pediatric and adult neuro-oncology practice, and this has been the focus of his efforts in translational research and leadership. His peer-reviewed publication record is diverse and includes laboratory-based cancer research, clinical trials, as well as public-health and psycho-oncology research. His primary research focus is on the immunology, epigenetics, and genetics of brain tumors. His achievements in research have led to change in practice in the care of both children and adults with brain tumors. Ashley is highly regarded for his work, as evidenced by numerous awards and invitations to plenary sessions and symposia of international standing. He has been the principal investigator of a number of important national and international studies both clinical and pre-clinical. He is recognized as a senior figure and opinion leader in academic medicine nationally and internationally.

Prof Thomas is Head of the Cancer Division at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, and Director of The Kinghorn Cancer Centre. He is a NHMRC Principal Research Fellow and medical oncologist whose focus is on the application of genomic technologies to the understanding and management of cancer. Prof Thomas founded the Australasian Sarcoma Study Group, a national research organisation, and established Australia’s leading adolescent and young adult cancer unit at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Dr Thomas leads the International Sarcoma Kindred Study, now recruiting from 23 centres in 7 countries, and led the first international study of denosumab in Giant Cell Tumor of bone, leading to FDA and TGA approval. He has over 150 research publications, including lead or senior author papers in Cancer Cell, Molecular Cell, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Lancet Oncology, JAMA Oncology, and Journal of Clinical Oncology. Since moving to NSW, he has established the Genomic Cancer Medicine Program, a multi-institutional precision medicine program for patients with rare and early onset cancers. He is a member of Sydney Catalyst's Governing Council & Scientific Advisory Committees and in 2018, he became President of the Connective Tissue Oncology Society, the peak international body in his field. 

Dr. Khasraw is a Medical Oncologist and Neurooncologist at Duke's Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center.  He is also the Deputy Director of the newly established Center for Cancer Immunotherapy, tasked to speed up clinical research and translation for scientists across all departments at Duke who have made discoveries that show promise for developing new immunotherapies.

Dr. Khasraw has trained and worked in several countries, he received his MBChB from Salahaddin University, Kurdistan, Iraq, followed by an M.D. from Groningen University, the Netherlands. He moved to Australia and completed his medical oncology training at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney and subsequently completed an additional fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Prior to joining Duke in September, 2019, Mustafa Khasraw worked as a medical oncologist in Sydney, Australia where he was also as a Clinical Lead at the Australian National Health & Medical Research Council Clinical Trial Centre at The University of Sydney where he has an ongoing honorary professorship in oncology.

He has a leading role in several clinical and translational programs and leads clinical trials with significant laboratory collaborations. He is interested in innovative trials designed to improve outcome of cancer patients. He is lead principal investigator on phase I, II and III multi-centre clinical trials for a number of pharmaceutical and academic groups.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians as well as being an Elected Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (Lon, UK).  

Ryan Sullivan is a clinical and translational investigator whose main areas of interest are the development of novel molecular therapeutic agents for malignant melanoma, the translation of promising preclinical findings into early stage clinical trials, and the development of predictive biomarkers for these investigational as well as standard treatment approaches. He currently serves as the Principal Investigator (PI) of a phase I clinical trials of dabrafenib, trametinib, and navitoclax in patients with advanced melanoma open at the Dana-Farber Harvard Cancer Center (DFHCC) and sponsored by the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP), a phase II clinical trial of the combination of the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib in combination with high-dose interleukin 2, and serve as the PI on a trial exploring the utility of a novel assay to measure BRAF in the blood.

Dr. Sullivan is board certified in Medical Oncology and is a Assistant in Medicine and member of the Center for Melanoma and Teermer Center for Targeted Therapy at MGH, as well as a member of the Melanoma Program at DFHCC. He also is a member on the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Institutional Review Board.

Dr. Christopher Gocke is an Associate Professor of Pathology and Oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is Director of the Division of Molecular Pathology, Deputy Director (Vice Chairman) of Personalized Medicine for the Department of Pathology, and co-director of Johns Hopkins Genomics. He received his B.A. in Chemistry from Princeton University and his M.D. in 1985 from Rutgers Medical School. His residency training in pathology was at the University of Rochester and Stanford University, where he was Chief Resident. He completed a fellowship in pathology at Stanford.

Dr. Gocke has co-authored over 125 peer-reviewed publications in the area of cancer diagnostics. He is a past Councilor on the Program Directors’ Council of the Association of Molecular Pathology and a member of the NCI’s Investigational Drug Steering Committee. He is co-principle investigator on two NIH research project cooperative agreements. He is board certified in Molecular Genetic Pathology and Anatomic Pathology.

Dr. Church is a board-certified Pediatric Pathologist and Molecular Genetic Pathologist.  She is the Associate Director of the Laboratory for Molecular Pediatric Pathology (LaMPP) at Boston Children’s Hospital, and an Instructor at Harvard Medical School.  She has participated in several high-impact studies using molecular profiling to support the care of children with cancer, including the iCat study, Profile study, and the ongoing multi-institutional GAIN consortium study.

Christine M. Walko graduated with her Pharm.D. degree from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and completed a pharmacy practice residency at the Medical College of Virginia/VCU in Richmond, Virginia, and a hematology/oncology specialty residency at the University of North Carolina (UNC). She stayed at UNC to complete a 2-year academic oncology fellowship focused on drug metabolism and translational research before taking an assistant professor position at UNC in the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics. Dr. Walko is now a Personalized Medicine Specialist, Attending for the Personalized Medicine Consult Service and Chair of the Clinical Genomics Action Committee (CGAC), Moffitt's Molecular Tumor Board.  She also serves on the ASCO TAPUR Molecular Tumor Board. Her research focus is on optimizing drug therapy using pharmacogenomics and pharmacokinetics to personalize intravenous and oral anticancer therapy for patients with cancer.

Dr. Jill Kolesar is a University Research Professor of Pharmacy and Medicine at the University of Kentucky and holds administrative positions at the Markey Cancer Center as the Director of the Precision Medicine Center, Co-Chair of the Molecular Tumor Board, and the Co-Leader of the Translational Oncology Program. She is a member of the Graduate Faculty in the College of Pharmacy, a member of the Markey Cancer Center and holds a joint appointment in the Division of Gynecologic Oncology in the College of Medicine.

Dr. Kolesar contributes substantial and sustained professional service to both the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and several pharmacy organizations. Serving on both the Early Phase and Cancer Prevention Central IRBs (CIRBs), multiple NCI study sections, and the Cancer Therapy and Evaluation Program (CTEP) Pharmacology task force and the Investigational Drug Steering Committee. Jill is a board certified Pharmacotherapy Specialist and is a past President of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP).

Dr. Kolesar’s research focuses on the drug development of anticancer agents with an emphasis on targeted therapies and biomarkers. She has authored more than 300 abstracts, research articles, and book chapters, and as a principal investigator she has received more than $5 million in research funding from the NCI, American Cancer Society and other sources.

Dr. Todd Knepper is an Assistant Member in the Department of Individualized Cancer Management at Moffitt Cancer Center. He graduated with his PharmD degree from the University of North Carolina - Eshelman School of Pharmacy, completed a Personalized Cancer Medicine Fellowship at Moffitt Cancer Center, and gained regulatory experience as an ORISE fellow at the US FDA with the Genomics and Targeted Therapy group. At Moffitt, he is a key part of the creation and development of Moffitt’s Precision Medicine Program, bringing cancer genomics into the clinic through the molecular tumor board and Precision Medicine Clinical Service. As an Attending on the clinical service, he provides clinically meaningful interpretations of tumor next-generation sequencing results for patients with solid tumors and hematologic malignancies. His research focuses on the utilization of genomics to improve therapeutic strategies for the treatment of patients with cancer and to advance understanding of cancer biology. He has co-authored scientific manuscripts in high-impact journals such as the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Blood, Clinical Cancer Research, and Nature.

Charlie Gourley graduated in Genetics from Glasgow University in 1991 and Medicine (also from Glasgow University) in 1994. He worked as a junior doctor in Glasgow and Dundee before training in Medical Oncology at the Edinburgh Cancer Centre (1998-2005), during which time he was awarded a PhD in ovarian cancer genetics (Edinburgh University) and an NHS Education for Scotland Clinician Scientist Award (2004). Charlie was appointed Senior Lecturer in Medical Oncology at the University of Edinburgh Cancer in 2005, Reader in Medical Oncology in 2011 and Professor of Medical Oncology (Personal Chair) in 2012. He received a Scottish Senior Clinical Fellowship Award in 2010. He became Director of the Nicola Murray Centre for Ovarian Cancer in 2016 and Clinical Director of the Cancer Research UK Edinburgh Centre in 2019. He is the translational research lead of the new Cancer Research UK Scotland Cancer Centre. He is the outgoing chair of the Gynaecological Cancer Intergroup (GCIG) Translational Committee and is a member of the Scottish Medicines Consortium, the Cancer Research UK Clinical Research Committee and the German Cancer Aid Scientific Review Committee. He previously sat on the Scientific Evaluation Committee, Institut National du Cancer in France, the Cancer Research UK Experimental Medicine Expert Review Panel as well as the Commission on Human Medicines Oncology and Haematology Expert Advisory Group.

Charlie was UK lead for a clinical trial called SOLO1 which demonstrated that the drug olaparib led to a three-fold reduction in the rate of relapse of ovarian cancer in patients with a BRCA1 or a BRCA2 genetic mutation. He also led the recently reported GOG281/LOGS trial of trametinib which is the first positive randomised controlled trial in low grade serous ovarian cancer. Charlie’s translational research focuses on identifying the genetic changes which result in tumours responding or being resistant to these new therapies. His team is particularly interested in rarer ovarian cancer subtypes which have been under-investigated historically, affect younger patients and for whom novel therapies are urgently required.

Dr. Hicks is an Associate Member in the Department of Individualized Cancer Management at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Oncologic Sciences at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine, and Adjunct Professor in the Cleveland Clinic Genomic Medicine Institute. Dr. Hicks received his Pharm.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in clinical pharmacogenomics at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Before joining Moffitt, he was directing Cleveland Clinic’s Personalized Medication Program.

Dr. Hicks serves as an Attending on Moffitt’s Precision Medicine Clinical Service. He is also leading efforts to leverage informatics tools to implement genetic testing into routine patient care to optimize drug therapy. Dr. Hicks maintains an active clinical pharmacogenomics research program and has over 70 peer-reviewed publications in journals such as Nature, Genetics in Medicine, JCO Precision Oncology, Clinical Cancer Research, and lead authorship on Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium guidelines.