OncLive Honors 15 Cancer Care Pioneers

Joseph A. Sparano, MD

For the 12th consecutive year, OncLive is honored to recognize oncology leaders whose innovations have contributed to immeasurable improvements in outcomes for countless patients with cancer. The 15 winners of the 2024 Giants of Cancer Care awards have made their mark with novel therapies and protocols across the spectrum of care.

BREAST CANCER

Joseph A. Sparano, MD

Mount Sinai

• Sparano is chief of the Division of Hematology Oncology, deputy director of the Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine, and the Ezra M. Greenspan MD Professor in Clinical Cancer Therapeutics at Mount Sinai.
• He was the principal investigator for the TAILORx trial (NCT00310180), which demonstrated that most women with early breast cancer and a midrange 21-gene recurrence score do not require chemotherapy.
• Sparano also led the phase 3 E1199 trial (NCT00004125), which found that adjuvant weekly paclitaxel improves overall survival in stage II to stage
  III breast cancer.
• He developed the rituximab (Rituxan) plus etoposide phosphate, prednisone, vincristine sulfate, cyclophosphamide, and doxorubicin hydrochloride (EPOCH) regimen for the management of HIV-associated lymphoma; and cetuximab plus cisplatin/5-fluorouracil/radiation for anal cancer.
• Sparano organized an international team to perform a meta-analysis of HIV-lymphoma trials and develop a new prognostic score for HIV-associated lymphoma.
• He played a key role in validating and/or refining prognostic gene expression signatures, including the Oncotype DX Recurrence Score and DCIS Score, in early-stage breast cancer.
• He is the chair and principal investigator of the AIDS Malignancy Consortium, a network of clinical trial sites in the United States, Africa, and Latin America. He also serves as deputy chair of the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group and is a member of the board of managers of PrECOG and the Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group Steering Committee.

COMMUNITY OUTREACH/EDUCATION

Edward S. Kim, MD, MBA

City of Hope

• Kim serves as physician in chief at City of Hope Orange County, vice physician in chief at City of Hope National Medical Center, and professor in the Department of Medical Oncology & Therapeutics Research at City of Hope. He is also the Construction Industries Alliance City of Hope Orange County physician in chief chair.
• He is a leading national expert in molecular prognostication, as demonstrated by the BATTLE study (NCT00409968), of which he is the lead author; it is the first completed prospective, biopsy-mandated, biomarker-based, adaptively randomized trial in patients with pretreated lung cancer.
• Kim led ASCO’s collaboration with Friends of Cancer Research to develop new clinical trial eligibility requirements to increase trial population diversity, homing in on 10 areas in which eligibility criteria could be expanded.
• He established a first-of-its-kind integrative oncology program combining Eastern and Western medicine approaches at City of Hope.
• Kim was also named a Modern Healthcare top diversity leader in 2023, the second time he received this honor, and named a U.S. News & World Report Top Doctor.

GASTROINTESTINAL CANCER

John L. Marshall, MD

Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Georgetown University

• Marshall is chief of hematology and oncology; professor of medicine and oncology; and director of the Otto J Ruesch Center for the Cure of Gastrointestinal Cancers at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.
• Marshall established the Otto J Ruesch Center for the Cure of Gastrointestinal Cancers in 2009. The organization is focused on improving the lives of patients with GI cancer through research, advocacy, and personalized medicine. He is also the director of the GI Cancer Alliance Network within the Ruesch Center.
• He established the Precision Oncology Alliance in 2015 and served as its founding director. The nationwide coalition studies the effect of molecular profiling on cancer research and patient outcomes.
• Marshall has served as principal investigator for more than 100 clinical trials and is an internationally recognized expert in new drug development for gastrointestinal cancers.

GENITOURINARY CANCERS

Christopher J. Logothetis, MD

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

• Logothetis serves as the director of the David H. Koch Center for Applied Research of Genitourinary Cancers and is the Roy M. and Phyllis Gough Huffington Clinical Research in Urologic Oncology Distinguished Chair at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MD Anderson).
• He was among the first investigators to explore chemotherapy for patients with advanced prostate cancer and has also been part of the development of bone- and molecular-targeted treatments for various prostate cancer subsets.
• In collaboration with colleagues at MD Anderson, he developed a mobile app allowing patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors to report adverse events and alert their care teams.
• He is co-leader of the Prostate Cancer Moon Shot program, which is a collaboration between basic scientists and clinicians to identify and execute advances for patients with this malignancy.
• Logothetis is the recipient of the 2021 Tex US TOO Prostate Cancer Medical Professional of the Year Award.

GYNECOLOGIC CANCER

Carol Aghajanian, MD

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

• Aghajanian serves as chief, gynecologic medical oncology service and is a gynecologic oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK).
• She directs MSK’s research program in chemotherapy for patients with newly diagnosed ovarian cancer.
• Aghajanian is heavily involved in research as the coprincipal investigator responsible for MSK’s participation in the Gynecologic Oncology Group(GOG) and member of the phase I and medical oncology committees of the GOG.
• She is the coauthor of several studies that led to immunotherapy becoming a standard therapy in endometrial cancer and PARP inhibition becoming a staple therapy in the maintenance and recurrent ovarian cancer settings.
• She is a recipient of the Boyer Award for outstanding young investigators at MSK.

LEUKEMIA

Guillermo Garcia-Manero, MD

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

• Garcia-Manero serves as chief of the section of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS); deputy chair of translational research; professor; and director of the Fellowship Program, all within the Department of Leukemia, at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MD Anderson). He also is chair of the Faculty Senate for MD Anderson.
• He leads the largest MDS program in the world and directs the MDS/AML Moon Shot program at MD Anderson, which includes the priority projects of developing therapies, overcoming drug resistance, and preventing relapse.
• He is the Dr Kenneth B. McCredie Chair in Clinical Leukemia Research in the Department of Leukemia at MD Anderson.
• He is the 2023-2024 President of the Society of Hematologic Oncology (SOHO) and chair of the 2024 SOHO Annual Meeting.
• Garcia-Manero has had over 500 publications on biology, therapy, and prognostication of these disorders, and the development of multiple therapeutic clinical trials.

LUNG CANCER

Solange Peters, MD, PhD

University Hospital of Lausanne

• Peters is a full professor, chair of medical oncology, and chair of the thoracic malignancies program in the Department of Oncology at Lausanne University Hospital in Switzerland.
• She is an active investigator in the realm of immunotherapeutics and its associated mechanisms of resistance in patients with cancer.
• She is a former president of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), becoming the youngest president ever during her leadership from 2020-2022, and is the founder of ESMO’s Women for Oncology Committee.
• Peters spent 5 years as an editor for the ESMO guidelines, which are designed to inform clinical decision-making with consensus recommendations from renowned experts.
• She is the coauthor of several papers centered around the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on patients with thoracic malignancies.
• Peters is dedicated to the creation of a translational program at Lausanne University alongside the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Ludwig Institute.
• Peters is also the scientific committee chair and Foundation Council member for the European Thoracic Oncology Platform.

LYMPHOMA

Margaret A. Shipp, MD

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center

• Shipp is the Douglas S. Miller Chair in Lymphoma, chief of the Division of Hematologic Neoplasia at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and director of the Lymphoma and Myeloma Program at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. She is also a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
• At the Shipp Laboratory at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Shipp’s multidisciplinary group is committed to translating emerging genetic signatures of specific lymphoid malignancies into more accurate diagnoses and improved therapies.
• Shipp, along with Philippe Armand, MD, led the phase 2 clinical trial that resulted in the accelerated approval of nivolumab (Opdivo) as a treatment for patients with recurrent Hodgkin lymphoma.
• She coordinated the development of the International Prognostic Index, a tool used to classify lymphomas based on predicted outcomes.
• She is the recipient of the 2001 Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a Fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research.

MELANOMA AND OTHER SKIN CANCERS

Lynn M. Schuchter, MD

University of Pennsylvania

• Schuchter is the director of the Tara Miller Melanoma Center and is the Madlyn and Leonard Abramson Professor of Clinical Oncology at the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
• She is a co-author of the seminal phase 1/2 study of dabrafenib (Tafinlar) and trametinib (Mekinist), which combined BRAF and MEK inhibition in patients with BRAF V600–mutated melanoma; the regimen was approved by the FDA in 2018.
• She is an active investigator in the realm of novel therapeutic development in advanced melanoma, which has included research with CD40 agonistic antibodies and cMET-directed chimeric antigen receptor T cells, among others.
• She is a longtime volunteer with the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), having served as chair of the Scientific Program Committee, Cancer Research Committee, and Cancer Communications Committee.
• Schuchter has been recognized by America’s Top Doctors in 2007-2008 and 2010-2018; by Best Doctors in America in 2003-2018; by the Main Line Today Top Doctors list in 2016; and by Philadelphia magazine as a top doctor in 2004-2021.
• She is the recipient of ASCO’s Hologic, Inc Endowed Women Who Conquer Cancer Mentorship Award in 2019 as a female leader and role model in oncology.
• Schuchter is committed to integrating palliative/supportive care into standard oncology care throughout a patient’s treatment plan and as the 2023-2024 ASCO president is working alongside committee members to develop educational sessions on symptom management, palliative care, and ways to have conversations with patients about treatment goals.
• She is also a former member of the ASCO board of directors, having served from 2009-2012.

MULTIPLE MYELOMA

Rafael Fonseca, MD

Mayo Clinic

• Fonseca serves as the director for Innovation and Transformational Relationships, Getz Family Professor of Cancer, consultant in the Division of Hematology/Oncology, and a professor of medicine, all within Mayo Clinic (Arizona).
• Additionally, he is a Mayo Clinic Distinguished Investigator.
  He is heavily involved in research investigating the genomic landscape of multiple myeloma and its ties to clinical outcomes and progression, in addition to the prognostic and predictive capabilities of minimal residual disease.
• Fonseca is credited with several systematic reviews describing: the relationships between disease progression and health-related quality of life; high-dose chemotherapy and early transplant vs standard chemotherapy and delayed transplantation; and the need to standardize chromosome 1q alteration reporting in clinical trials.
• He is the investigator on several studies evaluating targeted therapies, including the BCL2 inhibitor venetoclax (Venclexta) in patients with amyloid light chain amyloidosis and the XPO1 inhibitor selinexor (Xpovio) in patients with multiple myeloma.
• He is a proponent of bringing visibility to the cost of care for patients with multiple myeloma.
• He is also clinical investigator of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.
• Fonseca is a recipient of the Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award and the International Waldenström’s Macroglobulinemia Foundation research grant.

PEDIATRIC ONCOLOGY

Ching-Hon Pui, MD

St Jude Children’s Research Hospital

• Pui is a coleader of the Hematological Malignancies Program; director of the China Region, St Jude Global; and is the Fahad Nassar Al-Rashid Endowed Chair of Leukemia Research at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
• Pui is a recipient of the 2022 American Society of Pediatric Hematology/ Oncology Distinguished Career Award.
• He was president of the Society of Hematologic Oncology in 2019.
• Research that Pui has conducted in the US and in China has shown that economic intervention improves outcomes for pediatric patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) who have economic difficulties and/or reside in low-income regions.
• Pui led research showing that with the use of risk-adjusted chemotherapy, prophylactic cranial irradiation, a historic standard of care, is safe to be omitted from pediatric patients with ALL.
• He led the first randomized, phase 3 trial comparing the efficacy of dasatinib vs imatinib in pediatric Philadelphia chromosome–positive ALL, which was conducted across 20 hospitals in China. This trial demonstrated respective 4-year event-free survival and overall survival rates of 71.0% and 88.4% with dasatinib vs 48.9% and 69.2% with imatinib and revealed that dasatinib controlled central nervous system leukemia without prophylactic cranial irradiation.
• Pui also conducted research demonstrating that sequential minimal residual disease measurement can guide ALL treatments and help avoid overtreatment or undertreatment in patients with ALL.

RADIATION ONCOLOGY

Ralph R. Weichselbaum, MD

University of Chicago

• Weichselbaum is the Daniel K. Ludwig Distinguished Service Professor
  of Radiation and Cellular Oncology, chair of the Department of Radiation and Cellular Oncology, and codirector of the Ludwig Center for Metastasis Research at the University of Chicago. He also serves on the Committee on Cancer Biology and on the Committee on Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacogenomics at the institution.
• With Samuel Hellman, MD, FASTRO, he established the term oligometastasis and called it “a spectrum of disease from purely localized to widespread.”
• He invented a radio-inducible form of gene therapy, TNFerade, which is currently in clinical trials.
• He defined the role of potentially lethal radiation damage in human tumor cells and the role of a type of DNA repair in radiotherapy.
• Weichselbaum contributed to the concepts underlying TVEC, an HSV-1 vector that is now in clinical use in melanoma.
• Findings he worked on with colleagues have:
• Demonstrated that type 1 interferon signaling is required for radiation.
• Demonstrated that blockade of the PD-L1 ligand for the checkpoint inhibitor PD-1 increases both the local and abscopal effects of radiotherapy.
• He has developed the basis of a micro-RNA classifier to identify patients with oligometastatic disease who are more likely to be cured.

SUPPORTIVE/PALLIATIVE/GERIATRIC CARE

Ethan M. Basch, MD, MsC

Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina

• Basch serves as the Richard M. Goldberg Distinguished Professor of Medicine; chief of the Division of Oncology; physician in chief at the N.C. Basnight Cancer Hospital; a professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health; director of the Cancer Outcomes Research Program at Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center; and coleader of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.
• He has participated in the development of several national guidelines on the treatment of prostate cancer, and is a key figure in the development and implementation of patient-reported outcome (PRO) tools, including with the National Cancer Institute.
• Basch is the leader of a research program that aims to place the emphasis on patients first, improving cancer care quality, and putting patients first in drug development. Here, he has been author/coauthor of over 350 publica- tions focused on PROs and electronic symptom monitoring and presented research at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting showing online self-reporting of symptoms improves quality of life and extends survival.
• He is a recipient of the ACCC 2019 Clinical Research Award during the ACCC 36th National Oncology Conference for symptom monitoring research.

SURGICAL ONCOLOGY

Kelly K. Hunt, MD, FACS, FSSO

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

• Hunt is a professor and chair in the Department of Breast Surgical Oncology; professor in the Department of Surgical Oncology, Division of Surgery; and professor in the Department of Experimental Radiation Oncology, Department of Radiation Oncology, at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She is president of the Society of Surgical Oncology for the 2023-2024 term.
• Hunt is also the program leader of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Clinical Research Program (CRP), for which she also formerly served as the principal investigator and director.
• She helped create the ACS Cancer Surgery Standards Program, which aims to standardize surgical operations to improve the quality of care for patients with cancer undergoing surgery. This program educates surgeons on the technical standards for cancer surgeries and provides educational materials and documentation resources.
• Hunt helped develop the ACS Operative Standards for Cancer Surgery manuals, which include guidelines for several cancer surgeries and may be referenced in clinical trials that use surgical interventions.
• Much of her breast cancer research is on the role of axillary node dissection and has contributed to the widespread de-escalation of axillary surgery.

TRANSLATIONAL SCIENCE

Fabrice André, MD, PhD

Institut Gustave Roussy University of Paris-Saclay

• André serves as head of the Research Division and professor in the Department of Medical Oncology at Institut Gustave Roussy, and as a professor of medicine at University of Paris-Saclay.
• He is the 2024-2025 president-elect of ESMO, and he served as the editor in chief of Annals of Oncology from 2017-2023. He is a former chair of the ESMO Translational Research and Precision Medicine Working Group.
• He led research on the genomic characterization of metastatic breast cancers, which showed that the driver genes TP53, NF1, ESR1, RIC8A, GATA3, RB1, KMT2C, AKT1, and NCOR1 were more frequently mutated in HR-positive metastatic breast cancers. Furthermore, investigators found that mutations in RB1, TP53, and NF1 were associated with poor disease outcomes.
• He served as the lead investigator of the phase 3 SOLAR-1 trial (NCT02437318) in patients with PIK3CA-mutated, hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer, which showed that alpelisib (Piqray) plus fulvestrant (Faslodex) prolonged progression-free survival vs placebo plus fulvestrant in patients who had received prior endocrine therapy.