Current Cancer Drug Targets

Dr. Rajesh Agarwal is a Professor and Vice Chairman of Pharmaceutical Sciences Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Colorado, USA. His research interests lie in Cancer Pharmacology: chemoprevention of cancer by natural and synthetic agents; Cancer models: skin prostate, breast, lung, colon, bladder, pancreas, and head & neck; Cancer Biology: Oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes, cell cycle and apoptosis modulation, mitogenic and anti-apoptotic signaling, EMT, cancer stem cells, cancer cell metabolism and Warfare vesicants: Cutaneous and ocular injuries by vesicants, and rescue by natural and synthetic agents.

Dr. Nouri Neamati is a John G. Searle Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University Of Michigan College Of Pharmacy. He obtained his Ph.D. in biomedical sciences from the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston. He was a postdoctoral and a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health (1995-200). Dr. Neamati later joined the University of Southern California, rising to the rank of professor in 2011. He is also a recipient of numerous awards, including the NIH Technology Transfer Award in 2000, STOP CANCER Award in 2001, GlaxoSmithKline Drug Discovery Award in 2002, BCRP and LCRP Concept Awards from the Department of Defense (DOD) in 2005 and 2009.

Prof. Paul Workman is a Chief Executive and President of The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR).  Prof. Workman is a passionate advocate of personalized molecular medicine and is an enthusiastic practitioner of multidisciplinary cancer drug discovery and development approaches to ‘drugging the cancer genome’. He has established and successfully led drug discovery project teams. Professor Workman’s personal and collaborative research utilizes molecular pharmacology and chemical biology approaches, including high-throughput and genome-wide as well as hypothesis- driven strategies, to interrogate cancer biology, identify and validate new drug targets, discover and develop chemical tools and drugs acting on these targets, identify predictive and mechanism of action biomarkers, and elucidate mechanisms of drug sensitivity of resistance.

Dr. Grunt obtained a doctorate (Ph.D.) in Cell Biology from the University of Salzburg, Austria. Dr. Grunt also holds a Master of Science in Experimental Biology from the University of Salzburg. Currently he is also an Associate Professor in the Medical University of Vienna, Austria. He has published more than 80 scientific publications and is a named inventor of several U.S patents. Dr. Grunt received several awards from the International Society of Differentiation (ISD), the Austrian Association of Clinical Oncology and from the Austrian Society of Hematology and Oncology. He is member of the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR), the European Association of Cancer Research (EACR), the International Society of Differentiation (ISD), the International Society of Cancer Metabolism (ISCaM), and the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC).

Dr. M. Saeed Sheikh is a professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the State University of New York, Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York, USA. His research activities are focused on the development of tumor markers and targets for cancer therapy. Dr. Sheikh is also involved in a research to elucidate the molecular mechanisms, regulating cell death, and survival signaling in normal and cancer cells to better understand the processes of cancer development and progression and to develop novel, more efficacious and less toxic anticancer agents along with the investigation in a related area of cellular responses to genotoxic, ER and metabolic stresses.

Dr. Ilhan-Mutlu is presently serving as the director of the Gastroesophageal Tumors Unit” of the Department of Oncology, MUV. She was born in 1984 and graduated from Medical University. Her PhD is focused on the characterization of the hypothetical gene. She started her residency in internal medicine at the department of Oncology. She received “Transitional Research Grant’’ of the European Society of Medical Oncology and performed a Postdoctoral stay at the German Cancer Research Center.

Dr. Qadir has developed a new cost-effective and convenient method for diagnosis of cancer named as “Qadir test”. Dr. Qadir has also invented two anti-HIV drugs that may be used as prophylaxis or for the treatment of AIDS, especially for Pakistani’s patients. Dr. Qadir has worked to evaluate the pharmacological activities of local plants. He has established use of many local plants for cancer, jaundice/hepatitis, hypertension, asthma, diabetes, spasm, ulcer, fever, diarrhea, and infectious diseases of bacterial and fungal origin. Dr. Qadir has also worked on the isolation and structure elucidation of bioactive substances from medicinal plants and has resulted in the discovery of several new/novel natural compounds. Dr. Qadir has patents for Preparations containing locally isolated bacteriophages (Qadirphages) with their antibacterial activity. Dr. Qadir has increased the efficacy of many drugs with the use of nanotechnology and polymer-technology. Dr. Qadir has identified different biological and pharmacological pathways which are important for diagnosis and management of different diseases. Dr. Qadir has more than 190 publications, making an impact factor more than 100, and supervision of 02 PhD and 35 M Phil theses.

Dr. Sanjeev K Srivastava is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology, University of South Alabama, Mobile, Al, USA. He also holds joint appointment at Mitchell Cancer Institute, AL, USA. Dr. Srivastava received his Ph.D. in Human Genetics in 2007, and completed his post- doctoral trainings at the Semmelweis Medical University, Budapest, Hungary and USAMCI. Dr. Srivastava is engaged in a number of research programs that encompass the areas of breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, ovarian cancer and melanomas, to identify novel deregulated genes and dissect their underlying regulatory pathways and functional significance. He is well trained in small animal surgeries, non-invasive imaging, micro-ultrasound, 3D tumor models, novel cell line development among several others. He has published more than 45 international peer-reviewed articles, authored 6 book chapters, and more than 45 abstracts. His research has been highly cited and he is a recipient of an international patent “Methods and compositions for the diagnosis, classification, and treatment of cancer. He was funded by NIH/NCI as a PI for two Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I grants. In addition, he serves as a co-Investigator on two funded NIH/NCI R01 grants. Few other grant applications are pending on which he is a Co-Investigator.

Dr. C. Xu received his Doctoral degree from the Third Military Medical University (TMMU), China. Following his clinical and research training in internal medicine and preventive medicine at TMMU. He completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in cancer stem cell research at the Institute of Pathology and Southwest Cancer Center, Southwest hospital, TMMU. He is currently a Professor of Sichuan Cancer Hospital & Institute, School of Medicine, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. His research interests include the self-renewal mechanism of cancer stem cell, tumor microenvironment, protein posttranslational modifications in signaling and immune regulation of cancer. He has published more than 30 papers and gained strong expertise and experience in studying protein-protein interaction and signal transduction. Dr. Xu has provided numerous services to the scientific community and beyond, his current services include the members of the Committee of Neoplastic Supportive Care, Chinese Anti-cancer Association and Experts Committee on Education for Cancer Patients, Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology.

Davide Barreca is an Assistant Professor of biochemistry at the University of Messina. He specializes in enzyme modulation by natural compounds, inhibition of protein aggregation and activation of signal apoptotic cascade. Most of his research projects concentrate on separation and identification of unknown flavonoids, structural-activity elucidation, and biochemical analysis of their health promoting or cytotoxicity properties on cell culture. He is author of over 90 papers in peer-reviewed journals, 30 chapters in books, and 70 conference proceedings and reviewer of over 40 international scientific journals.

Przemyslaw Bozko received his Ph.D. from the University of Gdansk, Poland in 2003. After several postdocs he became the Lab head of the Dept. Internal Medicine at Tübingen University Hospital, Tübingen, Germany since 2012. His research interests include interactions between tumor suppressors and oncogenes, during tumor formation and anticancer therapy.

Dr. Massimo Breccia is assistant physician at Sapienza University of Rome, Azienda Policlinico Umberto I. His scientific interests and publications as author or co-author (more than 300 papers in peer reviewed journals) are mainly focused on biological and clinical aspects of acute and chronic myeloid leukemias and myelodysplastic syndromes. He is a peer-reviewer for several journals such as Blood, Haematologica, Leukemia Research, British Journal of Haematology, etc and member of editorial board of 5 journal (Leukemia Research, Leukemia Research and Treatment, Hematology Reviews, etc). He is a member of SIE, SIES, EHA and participates as study coordinator in several clinical trials for CML, AML and MDS. He is secretary of GIMEMA QoL Working Party.

Dr. Chai received his Ph.D. from the City University of New York in 1998 and completed his postdoctoral training at Harvard University in 2001. Then he served the Department of Veterans Affairs of the USA as a Principal Investigator (2002-2016), in affiliation with the University of California in Irvine. Currently, he is a professor at Baotou Medical College, Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology. He has published dozens of science articles in a broad field, from zoology to cancer biology. He has been a member of AGA, AHA, and ASBMB, and the editorial board of multiple journals.

Dr. Cheung is an assistant professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Hong Kong. The focus of her research is functional characterization of genomic abnormalities in cancers (with a goal of ultimately devising the optimal therapeutic strategies for cancer patients). Her research revolutionizes the concept underlying precision cancer therapy (where mutations of the same cancer gene may have different functional impact and confer sensitivity to different drugs). She has published in Cancer Cell, Cancer Discovery, Cancer Research, Nature Communications, Genome Research, etc.

Dr William Cho ‘s research interests have been focusing on cancer studies to discover biomarkers for cancer diagnosis, treatment prediction and prognostication. He has published over 230 peer-reviewed papers (Lancet Oncology, Clinical Cancer Research, Clinical Chemistry, Annuals of Oncology, etc) covering cancer biomarkers, proteomics, microRNAs, Chinese medicine and plenty of books including "MicroRNAs in cancer translational research", "An omics perspective on cancer research", "Supportive cancer care with Chinese medicine", etc. These papers have received >7,000 citations. Dr Cho is also a grant reviewer of the Hope Funds for Cancer Research (USA), Cancer Research (UK), National Medical Research Council (Singapore), etc.

MD in 1966. Assistant Professor in 1966, Full Professor in 1975, and Professor Emeritus in 2012 at the University of Genoa (Italy). Director of the Institute of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine (1986-1998) and Department of Health Sciences (1999-2005, 2010-2012). Author of 465 full length papers, 310 of which available in PubMed, cited more than 14,000 times. He collaborated with 150 laboratories all over the world. Member of the editorial board of 16 international journals. Principal investigator in a number of research projects, 10 of which awarded by the US NIH/NCI. He received several awards, among which the honor from MSU (2002), the Sobels Award (2005), and dedication of ICMAA (Brazil, 2010).

Prof Ferguson obtained a D. Phil. (Oxon,) from the University of Oxford. On her return to New Zealand, she developed a linkage with some anticancer drug developer, who were developing the Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre, based in the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Lynnette had become interested in applying her genetics training to an understanding of adverse genetic effects of novel drugs. She joined the Cancer Research Centre to set up the Centre for Mutagen Testing, which still functions to test anticancer drugs, novel pharmaceutical products and occupational situations as caner hazards in New Zealand. Her studies on causes of cancer have led to a significant amount of work on the New Zealand diet, and she maintains a dual interest in drugs and nutrients in the treatment and cause of cancer.

Chaunshu Huang is a Professor of Department of Environmental Medicine and Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology and Urology, and Deputy Director of Nelson Institute of Environmental medicine, New York University School of Medicine. Dr. Huang has published more than 280 research papers with total citations over 11,200. Chuanshu’s major research addresses fundamental questions concerning the responses of mammalian cells to environmental carcinogens at the levels of protein kinases, transcription factors and their target genes, as well as protein modification both in vitro and in vivo. His research also includes elucidation of tumor invasion and metastasis, as well as screening and identifying novel anti-cancer drugs and the molecular mechanisms underlying their anti-cancer effect.

Prof. Dr. Mohammad Amjad Kamal is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor at the King Fahd Medical Research Center (KFMRC), King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia, where he was full Professor from March 2011 to March 2013. He is leading a highly productive global collaborative research team based from Novel Global Community Educational Foundation (NGCEF), Australia. Dr. Kamal's biochemical research in the field of Alzheimer’s disease, Type 2 diabetes and leukemia has culminated in more than 500 publications in internationally respected journals, and 65 abstracts at international conferences. Prof. Kamal migrated to Australia in 1998 and was awarded a prestigious U2000 Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2000 by the University of Sydney, School of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences. Moreover, he is serving as a regional/editorial member/guest editor of several reputed scientific journals - this is undertaken on an honorable basis.

Dr. Hideki Kasuya obtained a MD from Aichi Medical University, and a PhD in Medicine from Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine. He holds the title of FACS (Faculty of American College of Surgery). He spent a time in Mass General Hospital (Dept. of Surgery, Boston) as research fellow. Currently Dr. Hideki Kasuya is a Professor in Cancer Immunotherapy, International Center for Medical Technology in the USA, and Chairman of Cancer Immunotherapy in Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan. Dr. Hideki Kasuya is currently the Editorial Advisory Board member (Current Cancer Drug Targets), published by Bentham Science Publishers.

Junya Kuroda, holder of M.D. and Ph.D. degrees, is an associate professor at the Division of Hematology and Oncology, Department of Medicine, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine in Kyoto, Japan, and has published more than 120 articles. Junya Kuroda’s research interests focused on the identification of the disease–specific dysregulation of epigenetics, genetics, cytogenetics, and cell signaling, to develop novel therapeutic strategies and biomarkers for cancers, especially hematologic malignancies, such as leukemias, lymphomas, or myeloma, while also covers clinical researches in hematological oncology.

Dr. Lin is currently a Principal Investigator/Professor at the First Affiliated Hospital in Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China. His lab works on RNA modifications, cancers and stem cells related diseases.

Debabrata (Dev) Mukhopadhyay, Ph.D.: Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Jacksonville, Florida, has a joint appointment with the Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering. Before moving to Mayo Clinic as Professor 14 years ago, he was research fellow and later independent investigator followed by as an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, Boston. He has carried out angiogenesis and tumor microenvironment related research and also leading translational nanomedicine programs including new drug delivery systems. He has been serving as reviewer for several study sections in NIH and agencies. Recently, he has been appointed as the Florida Department of Health Cancer Research Chair. He has published more than 190 peer-reviewed papers in different journals including Nature, Nature Medicine, Cancer Cell, Cancer Research, Nano Letters. He has several patents and has been involved to develop different start up companies in the area of therapy and diagnosis of the disease

Dr. Franco Patrone MD obtained specialization degrees in General Medicine, Hematology, and Oncology from the University of Genova, Italy. Currently Dr. Patrone is an adjunct professor of Internal Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine, University of Genova. He has published more than 170 scientific publications reported on PubMed. Dr. Patrone has been, director of the first Medical Clinic and of the Department of Internal Medicine, University of Genoa, as well as of the Internal Medicine and Oncology Clinic and of the Department of Hematology and Oncology, San Martino University Hospital, Genoa, Italy.

Yves Pommier is the Chief of the Developmental Therapeutics Branch, NCI. He obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Paris, and has studied DNA topoisomerases and the pharmacology of their inhibitors for the past 30 years. Three of his topoisomerase I inhibitors are in clinical trials. Dr. Pommier also discovered the first HIV-1 integrase inhibitors and the mechanism of action of poly(ADPribose) polymerase inhibitors by trapping PARP-DNA complexes. He pioneered the concept of drugs acting as interfacial inhibitors.

Dr. Prosperi graduated in Biological Sciences at the University of Pavia (Italy) and performed PhD studies in Physiological Sciences at the University of Milano, and in the Histochemistry Dept. of Leiden University” (Nederland). Dr. Prosperi is a Senior Researcher in the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), lab of Genome Stability and DNA damage response, with more than 100 publications. Formerly, Lecturer in Physiopathology of the Cell Cycle, in the Medical Faculty of Pavia University, Dr. Prosperi is currently a teacher in the PhD program in “Genetics, Molecular and Cellular Biology” (Pavia University).

Balázs Sarkadi, MD, Ph.D., spent several years as a post-doc and then as a visiting scientist at major universities in the United States and Canada. He is research professor at Semmelweis University, member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, past president of FEBS, member of several international research societies including the Academia Europeae. His research has been focusing on membrane proteins, including the investigation of ABC membrane transporters, which play a major role in the multidrug resistance of cancer, in general pharmacology, and in stem cell function. He has published more than 250 papers in international scientific journals, with a citation number over 13,000.

Dr. Kedong Song is currently Professor in Dalian R&D Centre for Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering, State Key Lab of Fine Chemicals, Dalian University of Technology. Prof. Song obtained a PhD degree from Dalian University of Technology. He was a Post‐doctoral research associate in Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London from 2008 to 2009. He became a full professor in 2016 at Dalian University of Technology in the areas of 3D tumor models, Stem Cells, Tissue Engineering and Pharmaceutical Chemistry. Prof. Song has published over 100 papers on international journals, and has got citation more than 2,500 times.

Dr. Kalkunte Srivenugopal obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry From the Indian Institute of Science. He is currently a tenured Professor of Biomedical Sciences at the Texas Tech University School of Pharmacy in Amarillo, Texas, USA. Dr. Srivenugopal’s research interests include brain tumor chemotherapy, DNA repair, drug discovery, p53 biology and redox signaling. He has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas and many private foundations. He has published more than 85 peer-reviewed articles.

Yingqiu Xie is an Associate Professor of Biology. He received a Ph.D. in genetics. Dr. Xie’s research interests include cancer drug targets, cell signaling, biomarkers, cancer genetics, cancer recurrence, drug resistance and experimental therapeutics, especially in prostate cancer and leukemia. Recently Dr. Xie has carried out the research on nanotechnology and herbal medicine in cancer signaling and pharmacology. Dr. Xie has been qualified for Ph.D. supervisor and has been a supervisor of several M.S. students. He has been serving as reviewer and Editorial Board member for several journals.

Dr. Meng Zhou received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Jilin University in 2016, China. He has been engaged in the study of bioinformatics since 2004. Currently, he is a full associated professor in the School of Biomedical Engineering, Wenzhou Medical University, China. His research interests include computational system biology, bioinformatics and application for human complex disease. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed papers which have been cited over 2000 times with the H-index of 25 and i10-index of 36 as indicated in Google Scholar (update in 2020/5). There were 10 papers and 2 paper on the list of the ESI ‘Highly Cited Papers’ and ‘Hot Paper’, respectively. He is also the Associated Editor of the journal <Frontiers in Oncology> and <Frontiers in Genetics> and the editor of the journal <Current Bioinformatics>. Dr. Zhou contributed significantly to the computational identification of novel biomarkers for cancer diagnosis, prognosis and treatment response based on multi-omics data. He also conceptualized, designed developed, and co-developed computational methods/tools to analyze and interpret human genes, diseases and gene-disease associations from system biology perspective.

Dr. Manny D. Bacolod is currently an Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College (New York, NY). After earning his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Connecticut, he has held various research positions at Duke University Medical Center, Weill Cornell Medical College, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Bacolod’s contribution to cancer literature encompasses a wide range of topics including colon cancer genomics and biomarker discovery, epigenetics, cancer genetics, brain tumor drug resistance, chemical mutagenesis, cancer metastasis, and immuno oncogenomics.

Dr. Yonghan He received his M.D. degree from Harbin Medical University in China. He finished his post-doctoral training at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and University of Florida in the USA. He is presently serving as an Associate professor of Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr. He focuses on studying the mechanisms involved in cancer cell death, and developing small molecules or natural compounds that suppress tumor cell growth. He is also very interested in studying cellular senescence and developing senolytics that can selectively kill senescent cells to improve the health of aged individuals. Dr. He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers in journals related to cancer or aging.

Dr. Heiko Konig is presently serving as an Assistant Professor at the Indiana University Melvin & Bren Simon Cancer Center in Inianapolis where his effort is dedicated to the care of patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and other hematological malignancies, and laboratory based research with a focus on the role of hypoxia in the development of AML drug resistance and minimal residual disease. He received his MD and doctoral degrees from the medical schools at the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich and the Philipps University Marburg/ Germany, respectively. He is also serving as the co-chair of the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium (BTCRC) Myeloid Malignancies Clinical Trial Working Group and the Hoosier Cancer Research Network (HCRN) Lymphoma/Leukemia Clinical Trial Working Group.

Dr. Guangwei Liu is currently serving as a professor in the Key Laboratory of Cell Proliferation and Regulation, Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China. He and his group members are currently interested in understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms for positive and negative regulation of T cell immune function, exploring the possibility for clinical application of anti-tumor immunotherapy and anti-infection, as well as establishing protocols to induce transplant immune tolerance. He has contributed more than 70 peer reviewed papers in international journals such as Immunity, Nature Immunology, Nature Communications, PNAS, Blood, Journal of Immunology and Cancer Research.

Dr. Valery V. Tuchin is presently serving as a Professor and Chair of Optics and Biophotonics at Saratov University (National Research University of Russia). He is also the head of Laboratory of Laser Diagnostics of Technical and Living Systems, Institute of Precision Mechanics and Control, RAS, and the supervisor of Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Biophotonics at Tomsk State University (National Research University of Russia) and Laboratory of FemtoMedicine of ITMO University (National Research University of Russia). His research interests include tissue optics, laser medicine, tissue optical clearing, and nanobiophotonics. He has published more than 700 papers (Web of Science), 27 monographs and text-books, and 58 book chapters. Dr. Tuchin is also a holder of more than 50 patents.