Considerations for Clinical Implementation of Immunotherapy in Veterinary Oncology

Heather Gardner, DVM, PhD, DACVIM (Oncology)
Assistant Professor, Tufts University 

Dr. Gardner is an assistant research professor at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University. Dr. Gardner earned her DVM at Washington State University and completed her Residency in Medical Oncology at Ohio State University before completing her PhD in Genetics at Tufts University. Her research efforts center on comparative and translational cancer genomics, using the tumor genome to inform novel biomarker driven therapeutic approaches.

Philip Bergman, DVM, MS, PhD, DACVIM (Oncology)
Adjunct Associate Faculty, Memorial Sloan-Ketting Cancer Center

Dr. Bergman is the is the principal veterinary investigator for the fully licensed canine melanoma vaccine (Oncept). Dr. Bergman is an adjunct faculty member of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.  Prior to Dr. Bergman joining VCA-Antech, he served as the Chief Medical Officer for BrightHeart Veterinary Centers from July 2007 to August 2011; from 1999 – June 2007 he was the head of the Donaldson-Atwood Cancer Center at AMC.  After finishing veterinary school from Colorado State in 1990, he was an intern at Kansas State (90-91) and returned to CSU for his medical oncology residency (91-94) and then completed a PhD Fellowship in human cancer biology from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston (94-99).  He was previously Chair of the ACVIM Board of Regents and President of the Veterinary Cancer Society.

Jeffrey Bryan, DVM, MS, PhD, DACVIM (Oncology)
Professor, University of Missouri

Dr. Bryan earned his D.V.M. from the University of California - Davis in 1993. He received certification by the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine and Masters degree from the University of Missouri in Oncology 2005.  He received his PhD from the University of Missouri in 2007. He is the Director of the Tom and Betty Scott Endowed Program in Veterinary Oncology, the Director of PET Imaging Center of the University of Missouri, Associate Department Chair for Research, and the Associate Director of Comparative Oncology for Ellis Fischel Cancer Center. Dr. Bryan’s research focuses on comparative examination of cancers in companion animals to better understand cancers in all species. His particular areas of interest are targeted imaging and therapy, epigenetics, and immunotherapy of cancers.  

Christian Capitini, MD
Professor, University of Wisconsin Madison

Dr. Capitini is the Jean R. Finley Professor of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology and a tenured Professor of Pediatrics who serves as Acting Director of the Carbone Cancer Center and Chief of the Division of Hematology, Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplant at the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison. Dr. Capitini leads an NIH-supported laboratory focusing on the development of cell-based therapies, including CAR T cells and NK cells, for the treatment of pediatric solid tumors and for complications of bone marrow transplant. He has published over 60 peer-reviewed papers. 

Cheryl London, DVM, PhD, DACVIM (Oncology)
Professor of Comparative Oncology, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education, Tufts University

Dr. London is the Anne Engen and Dusty Professor of Comparative Oncology and Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education at Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. She completed her DVM at Tufts University, Residency in Medical Oncology at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and PhD in Immunology at Harvard University. Dr. London has 25+ years of experience in translational and comparative oncology and ongoing collaborations with the Broad Institute, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Tufts Medical Center, and several industry partners in the realm of immuno-oncology and targeted therapy.

Nicola Mason, BVetMed, PhD, DACVIM (SAIM), FRCVS
Professor of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Mason is a Professor of Medicine in the Department of Pathobiology and holds the Paul A. James and Charles A. Gilmore Endowed Chair Professorship at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine. She received her veterinary degree from the Royal Veterinary College, London and her Immunology PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. She performed her post-doctoral fellowship at the Abramson Cancer Center at the School of Medicine at UPenn. She directs the NIH/NCI supported Pre-medical Cancer Immunotherapy Network for Canine Trials and the Comparative Immunotherapy Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Her translational comparative research focus is in adoptive cellular therapies and monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of companion animals with cancer and autoimmunity. She is a co-founder of Vetigenics Inc, an animal health company that develops antibody targeted therapies for a variety of different disease processes. 

Jillian Richmond, PhD
Assistant Professor of Dermatology, Cancer Center Member, UMass Chan Medical School

Dr. Richmond earned her undergraduate degree in Molecular & Cellular Biology from The Johns Hopkins University, and her doctoral degree in Pathology & Immunology from Boston University School of Medicine. She performed a postdoctoral fellowship in chemokine biology at Massachusetts General Hospital before moving to the Harris Lab at UMass to study chemokines in vitiligo, an autoimmune disease characterized by CD8+ T cell-mediated destruction of melanocytes. She has also studied the formation of autoreactive resident memory T cells that make vitiligo refractory to treatment. Her laboratory now focuses on T cell migration and function in other autoimmune skin diseases and cancers including Cutaneous Lupus Erythematosus, Morphea and T Cell Lymphoma.

David M. Vail, DVM, DACVIM (Oncology)
Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Dr. Vail received his DVM from the University of Saskatchewan (Canada) in 1984 and subsequently completed an internship in small animal medicine and surgery at Colorado State University prior to practicing in his native western Canada for two years.  He followed up with a residency in Medical Oncology at the Animal Cancer Center at Colorado State University, completed in 1990.  He is currently Professor and Barbara A. Suran Distinguished Chair in Comparative Oncology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the UW Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center.  Dr. Vail has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts and 50 book chapters in the field of veterinary and comparative oncology.  David is co-editor of the textbook Small Animal Clinical Oncology (6^th Ed).  In the past he has served as President of the Veterinary Cancer Society and the Canine Comparative Oncology and Genomics Consortium (CCOGC), Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Boards for both the Morris Animal Foundation and the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine Foundation, is a founding member of the Comparative Oncology Trials Consortium (COTC) and past North American Journal Editor for Veterinary and Comparative Oncology. He has been honored as the recipient of both the Mark L. Morris Sr. Distinguished Research Award and the Pfizer Award for Veterinary Research Excellence.  

Jedd Wolchok, MD, PhD, FAACR, FAIO, FASCO
Meyer Director, Professor, Weill Cornell Medical Center

Dr. Wolchok is the Meyer Director of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center, Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and Attending Physician, New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. He helped establish immunotherapy as a standard approach to cancer treatment and was instrumental in the clinical development leading to the approval of ipilimumab and the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab for advanced melanoma. He is a clinician-scientist exploring innovative immunotherapeutic strategies to modulate the immune response to cancer as well as to better understand the mechanistic basis for sensitivity and resistance to currently available immunotherapies.