Circulating Biomarkers 2014 Keynote Speakers

Xandra Breakefield Professor, Mass General Hospital (MGH)/Harvard Medical School Xandra Breakefield, Ph.D. is a basic scientist with a strong background in molecular genetics and neuroscience. She focuses her research efforts on: gene therapy for neurologic diseases; and elucidation of the role of extracellular vesicles (EVs) released from cancer cells in tumor progression. She led early studies demonstrating mutant RNA in serum EVs from glioblastoma patients as biomarkers. She did her undergraduate work at Wilson College and her graduate work in Microbial Genetics at Georgetown University. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow with Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Marshall Nirenberg at the NIH. She is currently Professor of Neurology in the Neuroscience Program at Harvard Medical School and Geneticist in the Neurology and Radiology Services at Massachusetts General Hospital. Professor Breakefield has received a number of awards for her work, including a McKnight Foundation Neuroscience Development Award, two Javits Neuroscience Investigator Awards, the Society for Neuroscience Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Harvard Medical School William Silen Lifetime Achievement Mentoring Award. She is a member of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences and past president of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy.
Nicholas Dracopoli Vice President/Head, Johnson & Johnson Dr. Nicholas Dracopoli is Vice President, Head Oncology Biomarkers at Janssen R&D, Johnson & Johnson. In this role he is responsible for biomarker discovery, development and applications for oncology products. Previously, he was Vice President of Clinical Discovery Technologies at Bristol-Myers Squibb, and prior to that spent five years in the biotechnology industry at Sequana Therapeutics. Dr Dracopoli obtained his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of London, and completed post-doctoral fellowships at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Subsequently, he served as an Assistant Director at the Whitehead/MIT Genome Center, and as a Section Chief at the National Center for Human Genome Research at the NIH before moving to the biotechnology industry. Dr Dracopoli has authored >70 scientific publications, and has extensive experience in the fields of genomics, molecular biology and cancer research.
Gary Palmer Senior Vice President, Foundation Medicine Inc Dr. Palmer is a medical oncologist with a career spanning three decades in oncology, initially as a clinician in both the academic and community settings and then as a biotech industry executive with diagnostic and therapeutic experience. Dr. Palmer joins Foundation Medicine from On-Q-ity, where he was chief medical officer and head of development for DNA repair marker development and circulating tumor cell technology. He also served as vice president of medical affairs at Genomic Health, Inc., where he was instrumental in the commercialization of the Oncotype DX Breast Cancer Assay. Prior to Dr. Palmer’s tenure with Genomic Health, he held leadership positions at Kosan Biosciences and Salmedix, Inc. He also spent five years at Amgen, Inc. where he was involved in the clinical development and commercialization of Neupogen, Neulasla and Aranesp. Prior to joining industry, he served as director of the Medical Breast Service at the University of California Davis Cancer Center and chief of medical oncology at Mercy Health System, Sacramento. Dr. Palmer received a BA from Yale University and an MD from the Stanford University School of Medicine. He completed his internal medicine training at the Boston City Hospital and his oncology fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He also holds an MBA from the University of California, an MPH from the University of California, Los Angeles and a JD from Concord University. He is a licensed physician and a member of the State Bar of California.
Johan Skog Chief Scientific Officer, Exosome Diagnostics Inc Dr. Skog currently serves as chief scientific officer of Exosome Diagnostics where he is leading the research and development efforts for biofluid diagnostics using exosomes in diseases such as cancer, metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases. He is the primary inventor of Exosome Diagnostics' core technology and, in particular, blood-based genetic diagnostics of cancer. Dr. Skog made the discovery that tumor-shed exosomes (microvesicles) contain genetic information of the tumor. He showed that these microvesicles serve to deliver messages to other cells inducing changes favorable to the proliferation of cancer cells. He demonstrated that these tumor exosomes are released into the bloodstream and that they can be isolated and studied for genetic mutations (Skog et al. Nature Cell Biology 2008; 10: 1470-1476). Prior to the start of the company Exosome Diagnostics, Dr. Skog was working at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School where he was studying the role of tumor stem cells in gliomas and later tumor derived exosomes, including their content of RNA biomarkers and transposable elements such as endogenous retroviruses. He also showed that gene therapy vectors can be incorporated into microvesicles and be used as a “stealth” vector with changed tropisms (Maguire et al. Molecular Therapy 2012 Feb 7). Dr. Skog received his PhD at the Department of Virology, Umea University, Sweden, working on novel gene therapy vectors for treatment of gliomas.