Who We Are

“I am so excited about this Wunder Team because, with them, anything is possible. Together, we will change the way colon cancer is being treated in the future, and with the goal to make this cancer a disease of the past.”

Dr. Heinz-Josef Lenz, M.D., FACP, a world-renowned oncologist, clinician, and researcher, is the Associate Director for Clinical Research and Co-Leader of the Gastrointestinal Cancers Program at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Lenz is Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine, Section Head of GI Oncology in the Division of Medical Oncology and Co-Director of the Colorectal Center at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. Dr. Lenz received his medical degree from Johannes-Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, Germany, in 1985. He completed a residency in Hematology and Oncology at the University Hospital Tübingen in Germany, a clerkship in Oncology at George Washington University in Washington, DC, and a clerkship in Hematology at Beth Israel Hospital of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. He served subsequent fellowships in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. An active researcher, Dr. Lenz focuses on topics including the regulation of gene expression involved in drug resistance, patients at high risk of developing colorectal cancer, and determination of carcinogenesis, methods of early detection, and better surveillance of these cancers. Dr. Lenz oversees the programming activities of the Gastrointestinal Cancers, Genitourinary Cancers, Women’s Cancers, and Leukemia and Lymphoma Programs. Dr. Lenz serves the Board of Directors for The WunderGlo Foundation. He was Gloria’s oncologist since October of 2010.

“Not everything that counts can be counted; I hope to contribute something that really counts. The Wunder Project will enable us to develop novel therapeutic agents to prevent and treat cancer and eventually eliminate cancer.”

Michael Kahn, Ph.D., is the first Provost’s Professor of Medicine and Pharmacy at the University of Southern California with a joint appointment in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Keck School of Medicine and the Department of Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences in the School of Pharmacy. He is co-leader of the Developmental Therapeutics Program. Prior to joining USC, Dr. Kahn was the scientific director at the Institute for Chemical Genomics and a professor at the University of Washington. He was the scientific founder of Molecumetics, a drug discovery company that developed small molecule mimics of large proteins. Dr. Kahn’s lab has emerged as a leader in the study of chemical genomics, which uses small molecules to dissect complex signaling pathways. He obtained his B.A. at Columbia University in chemistry, his Ph.D. at Yale University in organic synthesis and was an National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University with Professor Gilbert Stork. Dr. Kahn’s lab has been working in the area of Wnt signaling for the past eight years. Recently, his lab’s efforts have focused on Wnt signaling in development, cancer and cancer stem cells. For the past three years, his lab has been particularly involved in the role of Wnt signaling in ES cells and the maintenance of pluripotency versus the initiation of differentiation. He has published over 75 papers and more than 20 U.S. patent applications.

“The WunderGlo Foundation is an inspiring organization built by an amazing person. I hope to contribute to this cause by figuring out how colon cancer cells turn genes on and off with molecular switches called epigenetics. We can conquer colon cancer if we can pinpoint its weaknesses and attack with precision.”

Dr. Laird earned his B.S. and M.S. from the University of Leiden and earned his Ph.D. in 1988 from the University of Amsterdam with Dr. Piet Borst. He completed postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Anton Berns at the Netherlands Cancer Institute and with Dr. Rudolf Jaenisch at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. Dr. Laird was a faculty member at the University of Southern California (USC) from 1996 to 2014, where he served as professor of surgery, biochemistry and molecular biology; as Skirball-Kenis Professor of Cancer Research; as a program leader in epigenetics and regulation for the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center; and as director of the USC Epigenome Center. Dr. Laird joined VARI as a professor in September 2014.

“It is a privilege to be part of the Wunder Project, and to partner with others who share a common vision to transform the diagnosis and treatment of colon cancer. By exploiting state of the art approaches to systematically characterize the molecular mechanisms that drive tumor development and progression, we will develop targeted therapeutics that cripple cancer cells at their core, rendering them futile.”

Dr. Curtis’ laboratory couples innovative experimental approaches and model systems, high-throughput ‘omic’ profiling, statistical inference and computational modeling to develop a systems level, multi-scale view of cancer that spans single cells to patient populations. She is particularly interested in quantifying the dynamics of tumor progression and therapeutic resistance. To this end, she and her team have developed innovative spatial computational models that enable the inference of clinically relevant patient-specific parameters from cancer genomic data. Using this approach, Dr. Curtis and her team recently described a novel Big Bang model tumor growth, which challenges the conventional paradigm of how tumors progress with significant implications for earlier diagnosis and intervention. In parallel, her research aims to develop a systematic interpretation of the genotype to phenotype map in cancer by developing machine learning techniques to mine and interpret diverse cancer genomic datasets from thousands of patients. For example, using integrative statistical approaches her research has redefined the molecular map of breast cancer, revealing novel subgroups with distinct clinical outcomes and subtype-specific drivers ripe for therapeutic intervention. Ongoing efforts are aimed at developing predictive models that guide improved stratification and patient-tailored treatment strategies. In her role as Co-Director of the Molecular Tumor Board at the Stanford Cancer Institute, Dr. Curtis seeks to translate these advances to enable precision cancer care. In particular, the application of state-of-the-art genomic and computational techniques to patient samples in real-time, coupled with interpretation by a panel of experts will enable genomically informed treatment-decision making. Dr. Curtis has published numerous articles in leading journals and is the recipient of several young investigator awards, including the 2012 V Foundation for Cancer V Scholar Award, the 2012 STOP Cancer Research Career Development Award, an American Cancer Society Seed Grant in 2013, and a Stanford Cancer Translational Research Award in 2015. She is also the principal investigator on grants from the NIH/NCI, Department of Defense, Breast Cancer Research Foundation and Susan G. Komen Foundation.

“Passion comes from within. Inspiration comes from others. The Wunder Project combines both and cancer doesn’t stand a chance.”

Graham Casey, Ph.D. is a professor of preventive medicine and was co-director of the Cancer Epidemiology Program. Formerly at the Cleveland Clinic in the Department of Cancer Biology, he joined the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center in 2008. Dr. Casey studies breast, prostate and colorectal cancer to understand how altered gene function, whether by mutation or regulation, affects risk and progression of cancer, specifically as determinants of aggressive forms of cancer.

“The Wunder Team cares about getting the results and finding out the answers, about making the progress necessary to get us to a cure for colon cancer. We want these results and answers as quickly as possible, and with The Wunder Project, we can get there.”

After training in Internal medicine and Gastroenterology and a Ph.D. in the program of Molecular Oncology at the Center for Human Genetics, KULeuven, Prof. Tejpar became in Sept. 2003 an Associate Professor in the Dept of Gastroenterology, Digestive Oncology Unit, UZ Leuven. She works as a part-time clinician & part-time researcher (Senior Clinical Investigator of the Fund for Scientific Research- Flanders (Belgium)), with a focus on basic and translational research in colorectal cancer. Her main research projects involve molecular sub classification of colorectal cancer, prognostic markers in adjuvant colorectal cancer and predictive markers for efficacy of EGFR inhibition. Prof. Tejpar is a Member of the EORTC, Vice-chair of the EORTC TRAC (translational research advisory committee), Board member of the Gastrointestinal Group. Member of the EORTC NOCI Steering Committee and member of the Executive Committee of NOCI. She is a member of the EORTC PAMM and Laboratory Research Division, co-Chair of the EORTC-NCI-ASCO tutorial and member of the ASCO and AACR-NCI-EORTC program committee. She has been a member of the ESMO Translational Research Working Group since 2009, a member of the BGDO (Belgian Group for Digestive Oncology) and member of the Ministerial advisory committee for colon cancer prevention in Flanders since 2006. Finally, she is a board member of the FAPA (Belgian Familial Adenomatous Polyposis Association).

“I believe The Wunder Project has tremendous potential. The ability to integrate high profile genomic data with functional analysis of experimental models will indeed move the colorectal cancer field forward. I am thrilled to be involved in this endeavor.”

Dr. Alberto Bardelli currently serves as the Associate Professor, Department of Oncology at the University of Torino as well as the Director, Laboratory of Molecular Genetic at The Institute for Cancer Research and Treatment, IRCC (TO), Italy. Since 2004, Dr. Bardelli has coordinated a research group at the Department of Oncology. The research is focused on the identification of mutations in genes that may represent valid therapeutic targets in human cancers and the development of targeted therapies against this type of illness. A cum laude graduate of the Univerity of Torino with an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences and a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from University College London. Dr. Bardelli served as a Postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University; School of Medicine and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 1999 – 2004 and received the prestigious Alfred Blalock Research Award in 2004.

Winning seasons, superb graduation rates for his players and a basketball team that is as close as family are all attributes that reflect on the man who is in his 32nd year as the head coach of the Duke Blue Devils, Hall of Famer Mike Krzyzewski. Coach K became the winningest coach in NCAA Division I history, passing his mentor Bob Knight, with a 74-69 win over Michigan State on Nov. 15, 2011. Krzyzewski now has 927 career wins, while also ranking fourth in wins at one school (854), second in career ACC wins (388) and first in NCAA Tournament victories (79). He owns a 927-291 career record while attaining an 854-232 mark at Duke. But most impressive are the four National Championships (1991, 1992, 2001 and 2010) that make Coach K one of only three coaches in NCAA history to earn four or more NCAA titles. Krzyzewski has mentored seven National Players of the Year (nine selections), 25 All-Americans (39 selections), eight ACC Players of the Year (10 selections) and 78 All-ACC selections during his tenure at Duke. In the past 14 years, four different Blue Devils have earned National Player of the Year honors. On October 5, 2001, Coach K was presented by his college coach Bob Knight as one of three members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame class of 2001. Krzyzewski was named Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year on Dec. 5, 2011. In 1992, The Sporting News named him the Sportsman of the Year, becoming the first college coach to win the honor. Krzyzewski also received another prestigious honor in 2001 as he was named “America’s Best Coach” by Time magazine and CNN. Krzyzewski added to his already impressive list of accomplishments on Sept. 26, 2005 when he was named head coach of the USA Basketball Men’s Senior National Team program for 2006-2008. With Krzyzewski at the helm, Team USA won the gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics with a 118-107 victory over Spain. Krzyzewski guided Team USA to an 8-0 and a gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics to become the first coach since Henry Iba (1964 & 1968) to lead the program to back-to-back Olympic gold medals. Coach K posted a 62-1 record as head coach of Team USA, including 50 straight wins to close out his tenure leading the program.

Karen Bass was elected to Congress as the Representative from California’s 37th Congressional District in November 2010. From her experience balancing California’s budget in the State Assembly, she was asked to serve on the House Budget Committee. She serves on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and is a member of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health and Human Rights. She was selected by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to serve on the prestigious Steering and Policy Committee, which sets the policy direction of the Democratic Caucus. She also serves as the national co-chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Women LEAD organization, which recruits and raises money to support Democratic women running for Congress. Bass is also a member of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Prior to serving as the Representative from District 37, Bass made history when the California Assembly elected her to be its 67th Speaker, catapulting her to become the first African American woman in U.S. history to serve in this state legislative role. In addition to helping to navigate the state through a very difficult time, she championed efforts to improve foster care and quality healthcare for Californians. Also, under Bass’ leadership the Assembly fast-tracked federal economic stimulus legislation that aided Californians who have been affected by the national economic crisis as well as jumpstarted billions of dollars of infrastructure projects. Before serving as an elected official, Rep. Bass became interested in community activism. It was at that time that Rep. Bass made a lifetime commitment to effecting social change in her community and abroad. She worked for nearly a decade as a Physician Assistant and served as a clinical instructor at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine Physician Assistant Program. In 1990, Rep. Bass started and ran the Community Coalition, a community-based social justice organization in South Los Angeles that empowers residents to become involved in making a difference. Through her leadership, Rep. Bass worked to address the drug and violence epidemic and to engage community residents in addressing the root causes of injustice. Bass had one daughter, Emilia Bass-Lechuga and son-in-law Michael Wright. She continues to be inspired by Emilia and Michael’s passion for life. Rep. Bass also has four step-children.

Bob Schieffer is broadcast journalism’s most experienced Washington reporter. He is the network’s chief Washington correspondent and also serves as anchor and moderator of “Face The Nation”, CBS News’ Sunday public affairs broadcast. Schieffer served as interim anchor of “The CBS Evening News” from March 10, 2005, until Aug. 31, 2006. He is a regular contributor to “The CBS Evening News.” Schieffer has covered Washington for CBS News for more than 30 years and is one of the few broadcast or print journalists to have covered all four major beats in the nation’s capital – the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and Capitol Hill. He has been Chief Washington correspondent since 1982 and congressional correspondent since 1989 and has covered every presidential campaign and been a floor reporter at all of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions since 1972. He began anchoring “Face The Nation” in May 1991. Schieffer is a member of the Broadcasting/Cable Hall of Fame and is the recipient of the 2003 Paul White Award, presented by the Radio-Television News Directors Association. The award recognizes an individual’s lifetime contribution to electronic journalism. Past CBS recipients include Edward R. Murrow (’64); Morley Safer (’66); Walter Cronkite (’70, ’81); Don Hewitt (’87); Mike Wallace (’91); Charles Kuralt (’94); Dan Rather (’97); Ed Bradley (2000); Charles Osgood (2005) and Steve Kroft (2010). He has won many other broadcast journalism awards, including seven Emmy Awards, one of which was for Lifetime Achievement, and two Sigma Delta Chi Awards. In 2002, he was chosen as Broadcaster of the Year by the National Press Foundation. Schieffer was also the 2004 recipient of the International Radio and Television Society Foundation Award and the American News Women’s Club Helen Thomas Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 2005, his alma mater, Texas Christian University, created the Schieffer School of Journalism in his honor. In 2008, Schieffer won the Leonard Zeidenberg First Amendment award from the Radio Television News Directors Association and was named a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress. Schieffer has been a principal anchor for CBS News since 1973, when he was named anchor of the “CBS Sunday Night News.” In August 1996, he stepped down as anchor of the Saturday edition of the “CBS Evening News”, a post he held for 20 years. He and his colleague, Dan Rather, stand as the only two 20-year anchors of a regularly scheduled network news broadcast. Schieffer joined CBS News in 1969 and, after a brief stint as a general assignment reporter, was named Pentagon correspondent, a post he held for four years. Before joining CBS News, he was a reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and, in 1965, became the first reporter from a Texas newspaper to report from Vietnam. Schieffer later became news anchor at WBAP-TV Dallas/Fort Worth, a post that eventually led to his joining CBS News. He is the author of “Bob Schieffer’s America,” “Face The Nation: My Favorite Stories from the First 50 Years of the Award-winning News Broadcast,” as well as the 2003 New York Times bestseller, “This Just In: What I Couldn’t Tell You On TV” and “The Acting President,” published in 1989. Schieffer was born in Austin, Texas. He and his wife reside in Washington, D.C.

Brad Butwin is the Chair of O’Melveny & Myers LLP and former firmwide Chair of the Litigation Department. O’Melveny is ranked seventh on The American Lawyer’s 2012 “A-List,” which recognizes the nation’s most elite law firms for stellar performance in the areas of revenue per lawyer, pro bono commitment, associate satisfaction, and diversity representation. O’Melveny’s Litigation Department is one of only two departments in the country to have been named a winner, finalist or honorable mention in each year of The American Lawyer’s “Litigation Department of the Year” competition. Brad is a trial lawyer whose practice encompasses a broad spectrum of complex commercial matters, including securities litigation.

Chambers USA ranked Brad among the top 25 commercial litigators in New York in 2012, 2011 and 2010, calling him “an excellent strategist” who clients find “extremely accessible” with “a cheerful manner that is calming in high-stress situations.” Peers, the guide reports, describe Brad as “a thoughtful, bright guy who obviously pleases his clients,” a “practical, smart, hardworking, and client focused” attorney, and “a leading expert in complex commercial litigation.” Chambers also cited Brad for his commercial litigation practice in 2009 and 2008, commending him as “quick thinking and versatile.” Similarly, Benchmark Litigation has consistently named Brad one of the top securities litigators in the country, commenting that clients “enjoy his good-natured approach to what would normally be high-stress legal issues” (2012) and that peers call him “impressive in court and elsewhere” (2011). Further, Legal 500 has recognized Brad’s securities litigation practice for the past three years, noting his big ticket matters and describing him as “enjoyable and very easy to work with.” And Lawdragon named Brad one of the leading lawyers in America for the last two years, saying “The chair of O’Melveny’s powerhouse litigation practice has his hands full in turbulent times representing financial institutions in securities class actions, subprime cases, and Madoff-related claims” (2011). Brad has also been named as a New York “Super Lawyer” for the last five consecutive years in a survey conducted by Law & Politics and published in The New York Times.

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.

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., 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.