The Breast Health & Healing Foundation is grateful for the support and expertise of our renowned scientific advisory board.

• Professor Beatriz G. Pogo, Mt. Sinai Medical Center
  
• Professor Paul Levine, George Washington University Medical Center
  
• Professor Nancy Adler, McGill University
  
• Dr. Joyce O'Shaughnessy, Baylor Sammons Cancer Center
• Dr. Vincent K. Tuohy, Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute
• Professor James S. Lawson, Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute
• Dr. Fatah Kashanchi, George Mason University

Beatriz G. Pogo, MD is both a Professor of Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology and Professor of Microbiology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.  

Dr. Pogo is one of the foremost experts in Viral Oncology in the country. She began her medical education at Buenos Aires University School of Medicine before receiving Fellowships at Sloan Kettering Institute Cancer Center and Rockefeller University.

Dr. Pogo has won numerous awards including: Research Career Award from the National Research Council of Argentina; Damon Runyon Fund Fellowship; Outstanding Women in Science Award presented by AWIS Metropolitan NY; Membership in Sigma Xi - The Scientific Research Society; Fellow, New York Academy of Sciences; Member of the National Academy of Medicine, Argentina

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Paul H. Levine, MD is a Research Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Clinical Professor of Medicine at the GW Medical Center.  

Professor Levine had long expected to pursue a career in internal medicine, but he first signed on for a six-year tour with the Public Health Services at the National Cancer Institute and that somehow morphed into a 30-year stint as a Commissioned Officer. When he retired in 1995, Dr. Levine was senior clinical investigator of the NCI's Viral Epidemiology Branch and he continues to hold a guest worker appointment in the Institute's Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics.

Dr. Levine's long-standing ties to some of the nation's top researchers provide a steady flow of guest lecturers into his classroom, and generate numerous research opportunities for his students. Since his 1995 move to George Washington University Professor Levine has become increasingly involved in mentoring MPH, PhD and medical students, especially those involved with cancer-related research. He is co-director of Cancer Prevention and Control of the GW Cancer Institute.

Dr. Levine has long pursued research that emphasizes viral oncology, aggressive breast cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome and has more than 275 publications to his credit. His current focus is cancer epidemiology, including ongoing research on breast cancer aggressiveness, cancer patterns among veterans of the Gulf War and cancer patterns in the District of Columbia. He serves as project officer on more than 10 contracts with the National Institutes of Health and chairs the Biospecimen Repository Governing Board of the National Cancer Institute's epidemiology and Biostatistics Program. As an ISCOPES preceptor, Dr. Levine guides a multidisciplinary group of students working on health-related problems of the aging.

Most of Professor Levine's community service activities are aimed at confronting the significant cancer problem in the District of Columbia. Towards that goal, he chairs the Advisory Board of the DC Cancer Registry, works with the DC Cancer Coalition to develop a cancer control plan and is involved with the DC Cancer Consortium, which develops new programs that involve all the major hospitals in Washington DC.

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Nancy J. Adler is the S. Bronfman Chair in Management at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She received her B.A. in economics, M.B.A. and Ph.D. in management from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).  

Dr. Adler conducts research and consults on global leadership and cross-cultural management. She has authored over 100 articles, produced the film, A Portable Life, and published the books, From Boston to Beijing: Managing with a Worldview, International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior (5th edition, 2008), Women in Management Worldwide, and Competitive Frontiers: Women Managers in a Global Economy.

Dr. Adler consults to private corporations and government organizations on projects in Asia, Europe, North and South America, and the Middle East. She has taught Chinese executives in the People's Republic of China, held the Citicorp Visiting Doctoral Professorship at the University of Hong Kong, and taught executive seminars at INSEAD in France, Oxford University in England, and Bocconi University in Italy. She received McGill University's first Distinguished Teaching Award in Management and was one of only a few professors to receive it a second time. Honoring her as one of Canada’s top university professors, she was selected as a 3M Teaching Fellow.

Dr. Adler has served on the Board of Governors of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), the Canadian Social Science Advisory Committee to UNESCO, the Strategic Grants Committee of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the executive committees of the Pacific Asian Consortium for International Business, Education and Research, the International Personnel Association, and the Society for Human Resource Management's International Institute, as well as having held leadership positions in the Academy of International Business (AIB), the Society for Intercultural Education, Training, and Research (SIETAR), and the Academy of Management. Dr. Adler served as the co-chair of the Global Forum on Business as an Agent of World Benefit: Management Knowledge Leading Positive Change, co-sponsored by the UN Global Compact and the Academy of Management. She received ASTD's International Leadership Award, SIETAR's Outstanding Senior Interculturalist Award, the YWCA’s Femme de Mérite (Woman of Distinction) Award, and the Sage Award for scholarly contributions to management. She was elected to the Fellows of the Academy of International Business and the Academy of Management Fellows, as well as having been inducted into the Royal Society of Canada. Dr. Adler is also a visual artist working primarily in water-based media. Her most recent exhibition “Reality in Translation: Art Transforming Apathy into Action” was held at The Banff Centre.

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Dr. Joyce O'Shaughnessy is a Medical Oncologist specializing in breast cancer at the Baylor-Sammons Cancer Center in Dallas, TX.  

Dr. O'Shaughnessy shaped her approach to medicine back during her time studying at Holy Cross. Today, as a prominent medical oncologist specializing in breast cancer, she treats patients, conducts research, and is active in her field. Since 1997, she has practiced at Texas Oncology, PA, and conducted research through US Oncology, a network of 100 oncologists nationwide, at the Baylor-Sammons Cancer Center in Dallas.

O'Shaughnessy's life took a major turn during her undergraduate studies, when her 10-year-old sister died of leukemia. "This event focused me on cancer research, and I knew I needed to start right away. She received a grant to begin research at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology during the summer after her freshman year. That work resulted in her Fenwick Scholar thesis on human childhood leukemia.

O'Shaughnessy earned her M.D. at Yale Medical School and began her career in breast cancer research at the National Cancer Institute. "In medical school, I realized that I was better suited to internal medicine and adult cancer than to pediatric leukemia" she says. "One of the most important things I've learned is that you need to focus on your interests, but at the same time stay open to specific opportunities. In a sense, you need to wait to find where the road will take you."

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Dr. Vincent K. Tuohy is Professor, Departments of Molecular Medicine and Pathology at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH.  

His laboratory focus involves understanding the complex self-recognition events that lead to progression of autoimmune disease and developing novel therapeutic strategies that prevent disease progression. Dr. Tuohy and his team have a long-standing history of research on multiple sclerosis (MS) and have developed a widely used mouse model called experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) that mimics many of the features of MS. Their recent studies show that a single injection of a gene encoding beta interferon is sufficient to provide long-term therapy for central nervous system autoimmune demyelinating disease.

Dr. Tuohy has recently developed a mouse model for autoimmune sensorineural hearing loss (ASNHL), the most common cause of sudden deafness in adults and have developed mouse models for autoimmune-mediated heart failure involving targeted recognition of several different heart antigens including cardiac α-myosin heavy chain and the β1-adrenergic receptor. In addition, Dr. Tuohy's team has developed a mouse model for premature ovarian failure, a disease that affects 1% of women in their childbearing years, and our extended program involves the development of novel autoimmune models that provide effective therapeutic cancer vaccines for ovarian, breast, and prostate cancer.

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Professor James S. Lawson serves as Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Medicine at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia

James S. Lawson is Emeritus Professor and past Head of the School of Health Services Management at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He has extensive experience as a clinician, particularly in the field of child health, and as a senior health service manager. He has been a hospital medical director, the head of a state health department and a director of a state health policy and planning division.

He is an international health service consultant for the World Health Organisation and the Asian Development Bank. He has published widely. In 2003 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia 2003 for his service to medical administration and to the community, particularly through programmes aimed at health improvement.

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Professor Fatah Kashanchi, Ph. D. is Co-Director, W.M. Keck Institute for Protemics Technology and Applications at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. 

The current focus of Dr. Kashanchi's laboratory is on Gene Expression, Genomics, and Proteomics of HIV-1 and HTLV-1 infected cells. HIV-1 is the etiological agent of AIDS and HTLV-1 is associated with adult T-cell leukemia (ATL) and HTLV-1-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP). HIV-1 infected cells are associated with apoptosis and cell death, whereas HTLV-1 infection is associated with anti-apoptosis or malignancy.

Activated HIV-1 and HTLV-1 transcription requires the viral transactivators Tat and Tax, respectively. In addition, the chromatin environment greatly regulates transcription, through allowing access to the viral promoter as well serving as a platform to assemble large protein transcriptional complexes. Dr. Kashanchi's team is investigating the intricate details of viral transcription regulation, focusing heavily on the components of the protein transcriptional complexes, post-translational modifications of transcription factors, and the role of chromatin remodeling complexes (BRG1) on viral transcription.

Most viral therapeutics target the virus itself, providing very specific effects and limiting side-effects on uninfected cells. However, this strategy of drug design often results in resistant viruses, especially among RNA viruses. Therefore, the focus of the lab has turned to drugs that target cellular proteins that are essential for viral replication, but not for cellular viability. Cyclin dependent kinases (CDKs), especially CDK2 and CDK9, are excellent cellular targets, which have proven to be critical for viral transcription, but not for cell survival. Therefore, the lab is identifying novel next generation CDK inhibitors that are potent HIV-1 and HTLV-1 therapeutics.

Dr. Kashanchi's lab has recently developed a novel HIV-1 humanized mouse model. This new mouse model utilizes Rag2 −/−γc −/− mice that are sub-lethally irradiated to kill the mouse immune system. Mice are then implanted with human cord blood stem cells, which are allowed to reconstitute a human immune system in vivo followed by infection with HIV-1. This mouse model is essential for our therapeutic studies, as it allows the testing of promising viral inhibitors in a non-primate model of HIV disease.

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