SquamousCellCarcinomaofSkin near Summit, NJ

Biography: Jedd Wolchok, MD, PhD, FASCO, is the Meyer Director of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Wolchok was most recently Chief of the Immuno-Oncology Service and held The Lloyd J. Old Chair in Clinical Investigation at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and remains Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. Wolchok is a clinician-scientist exploring innovative immunotherapeutic strategies in laboratory models, and a principal investigator in numerous pivotal clinical trials. Dr. Wolchok helped establish immunotherapy as a standard approach to cancer treatment and was instrumental in the clinical development leading to the approval of ipilimumab and the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab for advanced melanoma. He supervises an NIH R01-funded basic science laboratory which is focused on investigating novel immunotherapeutic agents in pre-clinical laboratory models. The focus of his translational research laboratory is to investigate innovative means to modulate the immune response to cancer as well as to better understand the mechanistic basis for sensitivity and resistance to currently available immunotherapies. Dr. Wolchok received his BA degree from Princeton University, and his MS, PhD and MD degrees from New York University. Dr. Wolchok has received numerous honors for his work including: American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Memorial Award, the Giants of Cancer Care in Melanoma Award, the Berson Alumni Achievement Award in Clinical and Translational Science and the Zelmanovich Young Alumni Achievement Award from NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the Alfred Taubman Prize for Excellence in Translational Medical Research (Univ of Michigan) and has been designated a Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (FASCO). Most recently, he has been awarded the the Distinguished Alumni Award at MSK, the AACR-Joseph H. Burchenal Award for Outstanding Achievement in Clinical Cancer Research, the ESMO Award for Immuno-Oncology and the David Karnofsky Award from ASCO. Dr. Wolchok has served on the Board of Directors of ASCO and the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) and currently is the Treasurer of SITC. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and the Association of American Physicians (AAP) and is Chair of the Melanoma Committee for the ECOG-ACRIN NCI cooperative group. He is a full member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and center director for the Parker Institute of Cancer Immunotherapy.

Biography: Alana Nguyen, MD PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine/NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.Dr. Nguyen received her MD from Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts and herPhD from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She went on to complete her postgraduate medical training in Internal Medicine at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. After her residency, she entered fellowship training in Medical Oncology at Columbia University/New York-Presbyterian Hospital in the Physician-Scientist Pathway.Dr. Nguyen sees patients with malignancies of the digestive tract in her clinical practice.In addition, her research focuses on drug development based on biological understanding of therapy resistance. She received a Women Who Conquer Cancer Award from the American Society for Clinical Oncology and its Conquer Cancer Foundation for her work on a 3-dimensional culture model of patient tumors to predict for patients' response to chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Using this innovative model, her current research will focus on understanding the tumor microenvironment of pancreatic cancer, and how this tumor microenvironment participates in drug evasion.

Biography: Dr. Abdul Khuwaja, MD is an Oncology Specialist who practices in Astoria, NY. He is 75 years old and has been practicing for 50 years. Dr. Abdul Khuwaja, MD is affiliated with Mount Sinai Queens.

Biography: Rohit K. Jain MD, MPH is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and Attending Physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital- Weill Cornell Medical Center. Dr. Jain earned his medical degree at Topiwala National Medical College and B.Y.L. Nair Charitable Hospital, Mumbai, India. He completed Internal Medicine Residency at Johns Hopkins University/Sinai Hospital of Baltimore and Hematology-Oncology Fellowship at Roswell Park Cancer Institute University at Buffalo, New York. After fellowship, Dr. Jain, joined the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida as Assistant Professor, and was instrumental in building the bladder cancer program. Dr. Jain was selected as Castle Connolly "Top Doctor" for 2024, as well as one of America's Best Prostate Cancer Oncologist by Newsweek magazine in 2024. Dr. Jain was recruited to Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) in 2024. He cares for patients with bladder (urothelial), kidney (renal), prostate and testicular cancers, with a major focus in urothelial cancers. His research interests are primarily in urothelial and prostate cancers. Dr. Jain is involved in biomarker research as well as developing innovative clinical trials for patients, and he has received funding from the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

Biography: Juliet Barker, MBBS (Hons), FRACP, is an Australian trained hematologist. Having been an Attending Member and Physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and the Director of the MSKCC Cord Blood (CB) Transplantation Program, Dr. Barker has been recruited to Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital as the Director of the Bone Marrow Transplant and Cellular Therapy Program.Over the last 25 years, Dr. Barker has worked to expand transplant access to minority patients with hematologic malignancies and has demonstrated the ability of cord blood transplantation to provide curative therapy for such populations without suitable adult donors. Dr. Barker's work in this area has been internationally recognized and she has published extensively concerning novel strategies to optimize access to donor transplants and cord blood transplant outcomes. Additionally, she has a special focus on optimizing complex health care delivery such as hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in under-served populations. Dr. Barker has advised the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) and is a member of the Advisory Council on Blood Stem Cell Transplantation to the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. government. She has served on the American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy (ASTCT) Board and led the national ASTCT Cord Blood Special Interest Group. Having previously served as Associate Vice Chair, Faculty Development, in the Department of Medicine at MSKCC, Dr. Barkeralso has a keen interest in academic mentorship.

Biography: Nora Chokr, M.D., is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine/ NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. She specializes in the care of patients with blood disorders who are in need of bone marrow or stem cell transplantation or cellular-based therapies, like chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. Dr. Chokr received her medical degree from the American University of Beirut Medical Center in Lebanon in 2015. She completed her Internal Medicine residency at Yale New Haven Hospital and her Hematology/Oncology fellowship at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, where she served as a Chief Fellow. Subsequently, she completed an advanced fellowship in Bone Marrow Transplantation and Immune Effector Cell Therapy at Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM)/NewYork-Presbyterian (NYP) Hospital. Upon completion of this advanced fellowship training, Dr. Chokr was recruited to join the faculty of the WCM/NYP Bone Marrow Transplantation Program. Dr. Chokr's main research interests focus on increasing transplant access and optimizing outcomes in older patients. Her interests also include the prevention of disease relapse and graft vs host disease after transplant. Dr. Chokr is an investigator for several clinical trials that aim to advance the field. She has publications in leading international peer-reviewed journals, and is a member of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy (ASTCT), ASTCT Aging Special Interest Group, Cancer and Aging Research Group (CARG). Dr. Chokr is also involved in teaching medical students, residents and fellows.