Scientific Advisory Board
Dr. Tony Blau
Dr. Blau is a Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine/Hematology, Adjunct Professor of Genome Sciences and Co-Director of the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Washington. He also co-directs the Stem and Progenitor Cell Biology Program for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center/University of Washington Cancer Consortium.
Dr. Blau has served on multiple advisory panels for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and is Principal Investigator of a program project grant for pluripotent stem cell research funded by the National Institutes of Health. His research interests encompass stem cell biology, gene therapy, and personalized approaches to cancer treatment. In 2010 he co-founded a unique non for profit organization, 'Partners in Personal Oncology' (http://personaloncology.org), which creates partnerships that transcend institutional boundaries to bring the best the world has to offer to today's cancer patients.
Dr. Keith Flaherty
Dr. Flaherty is a leading clinician focused on biomarkers to define mechanisms and identify optimal target patient populations. He currently serves as Director of Developmental Therapeutics for the Cancer Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and as Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, and is internationally known for his expertise in clinical and translational research directed against signal transduction pathways in melanoma.
Dr. Flaherty has been at the forefront of clinical research for innovative kinase-targeted cancer drug development: In addition to being principal investigator of numerous first-in-human clinical trials with novel targeted therapies, he is the principal investigator of two national, cooperative group trials. He served as principal investigator for the first-in-human clinical trials of the first prospectively developed selective BRAF inhibitors, RAF-265 and PLX4032. PLX4032 has emerged as the most active single-agent therapy ever evaluated in metastatic melanoma patients, and is rapidly being tested in a phase III trial of which Dr. Flaherty serves as co-principal investigator.
Dr. Dietrich Stephan
Dr. Stephan is a widely recognized visionary in the field of molecular medicine and currently serves as the President and CEO of the Ignite Institute for Individualized Health. He founded the Institute in 2009 in his quest to change the medical paradigm from reactive and generalized to proactive and personalized through the implementation of molecularly informed, tactical solutions.
Dr. Stephan is a pioneer in personalized medicine and founded a number of companies, including Navigenics, Amnestix, and Aeuon, Inc. Prior to this, Dr. Stephan served as a Senior Investigator and founding Chairman of the Department of Neurogenomics at The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix, Arizona and later moved into the role of Deputy Director of Discovery Research at TGen.
Dr. Stephan has held faculty appointments at Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University and the University of Arizona. He is the author of over 140 scientific publications and has been highlighted twice on the front page of the Wall Street Journal for his contributions to the field of medicine.