BiliaryTractCancer near Teaneck, NJ

Biography: Dr. Lentzsch is a Professor of Medicine and the Director of the Multiple Myeloma and Amyloidosis Program at Columbia University Irving Medical Center/NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. She received her medical and doctorate degrees from Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, where she also completed her residency and fellowship. She did a research fellowship, studying the mechanism of action of thalidomide and its derivatives in multiple myeloma, in the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center under the mentorship of Dr. Kenneth Anderson at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA. Dr. Lentzsch was recruited in August 2004 to the University of Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI), PA, USA, and served as Clinical Director of the Multiple Myeloma Program at UPCI before accepting the position as Director of the Multiple Myeloma and Amyloidosis Program at Columbia University Medical Center. She cares primarily for patients with plasma cell dyscrasia including MGUS, Multiple Myeloma, Amyloidosis, POEMS and Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia. Dr. Lentzsch is an internationally recognized expert in the field of Multiple Myeloma and Amyloidosis. She serves as a SWOG Myeloma Committee Member, SWOG Study Coordinator and International Myeloma Foundation "Black Swan Research Initiative" committee member. She is a member of the standing advisory board for the evaluation of Secondary Primary Malignancies associated with IMiDs.

Biography: Dr. Timothy Wang is a leading expert in gastroenterology cancer research and patient care. His research specifically focuses on transgenic/ knockout mice, stem cells, lineage tracing, bone marrow-derived cells, and FACS analysis of immune/epithelial cells in the gut. His laboratory has for decades investigated the molecular mechanisms of gastrointestinal carcinogenesis, and has been continuously funded by the NIH for 29 years and by the NCI for 14 years. His lab has worked for many years on the role of inflammation in promoting gastrointestinal neoplasia, including colon cancer. His research has defined key roles for stromal cells in tumor development, including myeloid cells. Dr. Wang is the GI Division Chief at Columbia and serves as Co-leader of the Tumor Biology and Microenvironment Program of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center. He also serves as director of the Columbia University NCI U54 Tumor Microenvironment (TMEN) program and directs the Barretts Esophageal Translational Research Network (BETRNet) program and the Intestinal Stem Cell Consortium (ISCC) at Columbia. In addition to his leadership at Columbia, Dr. Wang has served as President of the American Gastroenterology Association (AGA). His work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Outstanding Investigator Award from the NCI, the Irene and Arthur Fishberg Prize for medical research, the Ruth Leff Siegel Award for pancreatic cancer research, and the William Beaumont Prize in Gastroenterology from the AGA. Over his career, he has organized numerous conferences, including conferences on Gastrin, Regulatory Peptides, AACR Symposium on Gastric Cancer, Tumor Microenvironment, and Keystone Conferences.

Biography: Naomi Berezin is an Assistant Professor of Surgery and Critical Care at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She specializes in both emergency and elective general surgery to treat such conditions as gallbladder disease, hernias, diverticulitis, and bowel obstruction, as well as the care of critically ill surgical patients. Dr Berezin's two passions are patient care and medical education. "I liked working with my hands as a child," says Dr. Berezin, who continued that interest in college at New York University where she studied English literature and music, before going on to complete the Post-Baccalaureate Premedical Program at Columbia University. "Working with my hands is what drew me to surgery." Dr. Berezin talks to patients about their diagnosis and treatment using language they can grasp. "I like to draw pictures for my patients so they can understand what I am talking about," she says. "I'm a visual learner and I've found that doing this enables patients to participate in their care. People ask really insightful questions when they are included in shared decision making." Dr Berezin teaches medical students and residents and is involved in courses on palliative care and surgical board preparation. Dr. Berezin is a member of a number of professional societies including the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma, American Association for the Surgery of Trauma, Society of Critical Care Medicine, and American College of Surgeons. She is dually board-certified in both General Surgery and Surgical Critical Care. After graduating from Sackler School of Medicine, Dr Berezin went on to complete her general surgery residency training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center. She then completed a trauma and surgical critical care fellowship at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center before embarking on her career at Yale School of Medicine.

Biography: Dr. Sathe completed her Residency in Internal Medicine at NYP/Weill Cornell and is a graduate of Rutgers-New Jersey Medical School. She also holds a JD from Columbia Law School. Her research focuses on improving cancer care delivery and reducing disparities in treatment and outcomes.

Biography: Neil Vasan, MD, PhD, is a physician-scientist in the Department of Medicine and the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. The Vasan Lab uses functional genomics to understand how oncoproteins regulate breast cancer cell signaling, growth, and therapeutic response. Dr. Vasan received his AB/AM from Harvard University and MD/PhD from Yale University School of Medicine, and completed clinical training in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and in medical oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. As a postdoctoral fellow, he identified doublePIK3CAmutations as an oncogenic alteration, which has gone from bench to bedside as a cancer genomic biomarker. His research awards include the NIH K08, Susan G. Komen Career Catalyst Research grant, American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) NextGen Star, andAmerican Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI)Young Physician-Scientist Award.Dr. Vasan is an active clinical oncologist treating patients with breast cancerand serves as a standing member of the Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) for the FDA.

Biography: As an Assistant Professor of Medicine within the Division of Hematology/Oncology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC), Dr. McGuinness specializes in the care of patients with breast cancer or who are at high risk of developing breast cancer. She is currently involved in patient care, clinical research, and education. Her research interests include the evaluation of novel imaging-based tools to refine breast cancer risk prediction and to predict which patients receive benefit from breast cancer therapies. As part of this work, she collaborates closely with computer scientists, data scientists, and breast radiologists at Columbia. She also serves as the principal investigator for multiple clinical trials at CUIMC that evaluate novel treatments for patients with breast cancer. She is actively involved in the SWOG Cancer Research Network, and serves as a member of the SWOG Prevention and Epidemiology and Breast Committees, as well as the SWOG Breast Translational Medicine Working Group. Dr. McGuinness received her bachelor of arts in Biology magna cum laude from Williams College, and her medical degree with Honor from Baylor College of Medicine, where she was elected to the Gold Humanism Honor Society. She completed both her Internal Medicine residency and Hematology/Oncology fellowship at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, during which she also served as Chief Fellow and completed a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biomedical Informatics. Dr. McGuinness is the recipient of multiple career development awards from the Conquer Cancer Foundation/American Society of Clinical Oncology and the Susan G. Komen Foundation, as well as a TRANSFORM KL2 Mentored Career Development Award.

Biography: Dr. Hua-Jay "Jeff" Cherng is an assistant professor of medicine in the lymphoma program in the Division of Hematology and Oncology. He earned his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University and completed internal medicine residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He subsequently trained at MD Anderson Cancer Center for his hematology and oncology fellowship. He is board certified in Internal Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology. Dr. Cherng is a clinical investigator who researches non-invasive response assessment tools such as biomarkers and imaging to predict outcomes of lymphoma patients. His focus is on circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), fragments of genetic material shed by lymphomas that can be sequenced and tracked to measure molecular response and minimal residual disease. His work on ctDNA and PET scans in lymphoma has led to publications in high-impact journals including Blood, Blood Advances, American Journal of Hematology, and British Journal of Haematology. He has earned abstract merit awards from the American Society of Hematology, American Society of Clinical Oncology, and Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference. His accomplishments during fellowship earned him a Waun Ki Hong Award for Achievement in Clinical Investigation. His research on ctDNA in patients with relapsed lymphoma receiving chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy is funded by a Conquer Cancer Young Investigator Award grant. He is a member of Southwestern Oncology Group Lymphoma Working Group and Committee. He was selected to participate in the Academy of Next Wave of Investigators for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and the American Society of Hematology Clinical Research Training Institute, competitive programs aimed at supporting academic and career development for promising clinical researchers. Dr. Cherng's goal is to design clinical trials with treatment guided by ctDNA; this would allow for treatment de-escalation in good responders to minimize toxicity and escalation in poor responders to maximize chance for durable remissions. Dr. Cherng sees patients with all types of lymphoma with an emphasis on aggressive non-Hodgkin B-cell lymphomas. He treats patients with standard-of-care treatments as well as on clinical trial protocols.

Biography: Dr. Francisco Guzman-Pruneda is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at Columbia University Medical Center. He is Board Certified in Surgery by the American Board of Surgery. He completed his Medical School training in Monterrey, Mexico, his residency in General Surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital and The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and a fellowship in Bariatric Surgery at Mount Sinai in New York City. In addition, Dr. Guzman-Pruneda completed two research fellowships: in Immunology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer and in Pediatric Surgery at Texas Children's Hospital (Baylor College of Medicine), and a Global Surgery Exchange Program in Sydney, Australia. Dr. Guzman's clinical specialties include both laparoscopic and robotic approaches in general and bariatric surgery.

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Biography: Dr. Peter Liou is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at Columbia University and an Attending Transplant Surgeon at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He is board-certified in general surgery and received specialty training in abdominal transplant and hepatobiliary surgery. His practice interests focus on the surgical management of adults and children with liver and bile duct disease including those with liver failure, cirrhosis, bile duct and gallbladder disease, as well as those with benign and malignant liver tumors and cysts. He is skilled in minimally invasive surgery and trained to perform both laparoscopic and robotic surgery whenever possible. Dr. Liou received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Biochemistry and Music from Columbia College, and subsequently attended medical school at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. He was the recipient of a Doris Duke Translational Research Grant under the mentorship of Dr. Jessica Kandel. Dr. Liou then completed his general surgical residency at New York Presbyterian / Columbia, while receiving additional clinical training in Intestinal/Multivisceral transplant and Adult ECMO with Drs. Tomoaki Kato and Matthew Bacchetta during that time. He then continued with a surgical fellowship in Abdominal Organ Transplantation and Hepatobiliary Surgery at New York Presbyterian Columbia and Weill Cornell. Committed to providing compassionate and the latest comprehensive care, Dr. Liou routinely collaborates with an elite team of world-class providers in liver disease to achieve optimal outcomes and treatment success. He is also interested in international medicine, having participated in surgical outreaches and exchanges in China, Kenya, Swaziland, and Tanzania.

Biography: Dr. Bernard Biviano, MD is a General Surgery Specialist who practices in Astoria, NY. He is 62 years old and has been practicing for 35 years. Dr. Bernard Biviano, MD is affiliated with Mount Sinai Morningside, Mount Sinai Queens and Mount Sinai Brooklyn.