Who We Are

Medical Advisory Board

JOSEP TABERNERO, M.D., PH.D., MSC

Josep Tabernero is currently the Head of the Medical Oncology Department at the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain and Head of the Gastrointestinal Tumors and Phase I Unit. He is actively involved in translational research and pharmacodynamic phase I studies with molecular targeted therapies and related translational research, with a special focus on EGFR-family inhibitors and IGFR-PI3K-Akt-mTOR pathway inhibitors, and phase 2 and 3 studies with new chemotherapy agents in gastrointestinal tumors. Dr. Tabernero received his medical degree from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and completed his specialist training in medical oncology. He is a member of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), and different Editorial Boards including the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Clinical Cancer Research, Cancer Discovery, Clinical Colorectal Cancer and Annals of Oncology. He has (co)authored approximately 180 peer-reviewed papers. He has also been member of the Educational and Scientific Committees of the ESMO, ECCO, ASCO Gastrointestinal and WCGIC meetings.

JUSTIN STEBBING, M.D., M.A., FRCP, FRCPATH, PH.D.

Professor Justin Stebbing trained in medicine at Trinity College Oxford, where he gained a triple first class degree. After completion of junior doctor posts in Oxford, he undertook junior doctor training and a residency at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in the US, returning to London to continue his career in oncology at The Royal Marsden and then St Bartholomew’s Hospitals. Professor Stebbing’s PhD research investigated the interplay between the immune system and cancer. Professor Stebbing has published over 400 peer-reviewed papers in journals such as the Lancet, New England Journal, Blood, the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Annals of Internal Medicine, as well as writing regularly for national newspapers and presenting new data on optimal cancer therapies at the major international conferences. His focus at Imperial is on new therapies in cancer, and the systemic management of patients with solid malignancies including a number of new biomarker-based approaches. His laboratory work is concentrated on new druggable target discovery. He has also set up his own cancer charity, Action Against Cancer (www.aacancer.org/) which concentrates on drug development across a variety of solid tumour types. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the American Board of Internal Medicine and the Royal College of Pathologists, and sits on the advisory Boards of a number of international cancer committees. He chairs the World Vaccine Congress and is on the editorial board of a number of world leading general medical and cancer journals such as the Journal of Clinical Oncology and Oncogene. In 2011, work Justin’s team published in Nature Medicine outlines the discovery of a new cancer-causing gene. In 2012 the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) awarded Justin Stebbing its first translational research professorship in oncology, aiming to bridge the gap between the laboratory and the patient to ensure therapy is personalised. The focus of this is understanding why some patients with cancer relapse, and developing a program to reverse this and prevent it. With the excellent research record we have at Imperial College London and the clinical expertise from Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, we believe we are ideally placed to achieve this.

PETER A. JONES, PH.D., D.SC.

Peter A. Jones, Ph.D., D.Sc., Director of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, is a Distinguished Professor of Urology and Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, and the H. Leslie Hoffman and Elaine S. Hoffman Chair in Cancer Research. He is known for his studies on the molecular biology of cancer and of basic mechanisms of DNA methylation and its role in cancer and differentiation. In 1980, Dr. Jones made a seminal discovery that the drug 5-azacytidine could induce profound changes in gene expression at the same time as being a powerful inhibitor of DNA methylation. This discovery was the first to causally link DNA cytosine methylation, differentiation, and gene expression and played a large part in opening the now burgeoning field of epigenetics. The discovery of the mechanism of action of this drug led directly to the isolation of the first mammalian determination gene and also to the discovery of a large number of tumor suppressor genes which become epigenetically silenced in human cancer. The drug has now been approved for use in the treatment of myelodysplastic syndrome by the FDA. In addition to this work, Dr. Jones’ laboratory has played a seminal role in the delineation of molecular pathways leading to human bladder cancer, to the realization that DNA methylation sites are hotspots for cancer causing mutations and to the growing realization that epigenetic silencing plays a major role in human carcinogenesis. Dr. Jones’ work has been recognized as a “milestone” in gene expression and a “milestone” in cancer by Nature magazine. He was recently selected to co-lead one of the five prestigious “Dream Teams” selected by Stand Up 2 Cancer, an initiative dedicated to funding cutting-edge research designed to bring new cancer treatment to patients in an accelerated timeframe. Dr. Jones was born in South Africa, raised and attended school in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and received his Doctor of Philosophy Degree from the University of London in 1973. He joined the University of Southern California in 1977, attaining the rank of Professor in 1985, and becoming Director of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center in 1993. In 1999, he was named Distinguished Professor of Urology and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at USC. He has received a variety of honors, including a MERIT Award from the National Cancer Institute, the AACR Kirk A. Landon Prize for Basic Cancer Research in 2009 and the David Workman Memorial Award from the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation in 2008. He was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010. He is the past President of the American Association for Cancer Research. He is the author of more than 250 journal publications and book chapters, and he serves on several national and international committees, panels, and editorial boards.