Our team

Directors

Pasi Jänne, MD, PhD

Senior Vice President for Translational Medicine

Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology

Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

David M. Livingston, M.D. Chair

Director, Robert and Renée Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science

Director, Chen-Huang Center for EGFR Mutant Lung Cancers

Pasi Jänne, MD, PhD

A preeminent translational oncologist whose work has fundamentally changed the way lung cancer is treated, in his research Dr. Jänne combines laboratory-based studies with translational research and clinical trials of novel therapeutic agents in patients with lung cancer. In 2004, he was the co-first author of a seminal study that identified somatic mutations in EGFR in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) tumors and demonstrated their association with the efficacy of the EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor gefitinib.

Dr. Jänne’s current focus is on understanding mechanisms of acquired resistance to targeted therapies in a variety of cancers, development of new and novel models to study resistance, and developing new therapeutic strategies to effectively treat drug-resistant cancers. His studies helped identify MET amplification as a novel EGFR inhibitor resistance mechanism and have now inspired several clinical trials combining EGFR and MET inhibitors for lung cancer patients. Dr. Jänne has also extensively studied strategies to overcome mechanism of resistance mediated by EGFR mutations and led the first-in-human clinical trial of the mutant selective EGFR inhibitor, which received regulatory approval in 2015.

Dr. Jänne received an MD and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, and completed his internship and residency in medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. In 2002, he earned a master’s degree in clinical investigation from Harvard University. He has received several awards for his research, including from Uniting Against Lung Cancer, American Lung Association, and the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation. He is an elected member for the American Society of Clinical Investigation (2009), American Association of Physicians (2016), and the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters (2016). He is also the recipient of 2010 American Association of Cancer Research Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Memorial and Team Science awards, the 2018 Waun Ki Hong Award for Outstanding Achievement in Translational and Clinical Cancer Research, and the 2018 ESMO Translational Research Award. In 2017 Dr. Jänne was awarded an American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professorship.

David Barbie, MD

Director, Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology

Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Associate Director, Robert and Renée Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science

David A. Barbie, MD

Dr. Barbie is the Director of the Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is also Associate Director of the Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science, as well as an Associate Member of the Broad Institute. Dr.Barbie earned his undergraduate degree at Harvard College and M.D. degree at Harvard Medical School and was a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator Program Medical Student Research Fellow in Dr. Edward Harlow’s laboratory at the MGH Cancer Center. He then completed an MGH internal medicine residency and chief medical residency, a Dana-Farber Partners Oncology fellowship, and performed his post-doctoral work in Dr.William Hahn’s laboratory at DFCI and the Broad Institute. Currently, he is the principal investigator of his own laboratory at DFCI while also seeing patients in the Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology.

Dr. Barbie’s research has had a strong translational focus, studying the role of innate immunity in lung cancer. His early collaborations with Gilead Sciences led to the first TBK1 inhibitor trials using a repurposed multitargeted JAK inhibitor. He was principal investigator of a multicenter lung cancer clinical trial using this first-generation drug and his work also led to similar studies in colorectal and pancreatic cancer. Currently, his laboratory is developing ways to co-opt TBK1 signaling to drive an antiviral response that can boost the impact of cancer immunotherapies. As a fellow, he was the recipient of an ASCO Young Investigator award and an NIH K08 grant. Since starting his laboratory, he has also received an ASCI Young Physician-Scientist Award and was elected as an ASCI Member in 2019. Currently, he is a principal or co-principal investigator on multiple NIH grants including the DF/HCC Lung Cancer SPORE, R01, and U01 awards. He has also received significant funding from the V Foundation, SU2C, the Mark Foundation, the Ludwig Center, and the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.

Leadership

Cloud Paweletz, PhD Head of Research

Cloud Paweletz, PhD

Dr. Paweletz is Head of Research of the Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science at the Dana-Faber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, where he uses his experiences from industry, government, and academic institutions to oversee the scientific pursuits of the Center. He joined from Merck & Co., Inc., where he most recently served as principal scientist, externalization lead, and proteomics site lead for the Department of Molecular Biomarkers. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physiology at the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, and a research fellow in the Laboratory of Pathology at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health. Dr. Paweletz earned his Ph.D. with honors from Georgetown University and his Bachelor of Science Degree from Baldwin Wallace College.

Dr. Paweletz has invented and patented technologies in the fields of precision immunotherapy, molecular diagnostics, liquid biopsies, and proteomics that were in many cases years ahead of the field. He was the recipient of the Bristol Meyer Squibb Young Investigator Award, Ortho-Janssen Scholar in Training Award, and the Fellows Award for Research Excellence at the NCI.

Prafulla Gokhale, PhDHead of in vivo Pharmacology

PRAFULLA GOKHALE, PHD

Dr. Gokhale has over 20 years of experience in preclinical oncology drug discovery and development. He started his career as a faculty at Georgetown University in the Radiation Medicine Department before moving to the pharmaceutical industry. He led the in vivo pharmacology teams with increasing responsibility at OSI Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer, and Verastem. He is also the current head of the Experimental Therapeutics Core at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Patrick Lizotte, PhDCancer Immunology Lead

PATRICK LIZOTTE, PHD

Dr. Lizotte received a B.A. from Colby College in Waterville, Maine, with majors in biology and history. He conducted genome-wide synthetic lethal screens in oncology models as a research technician at the Broad Institute. Following doctoral training in immunology at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College, he moved to Dana-Farber’s Belfer Center in 2015. His cross-disciplinary research expertise includes leveraging genomics tools for immune-oncology target discovery and clinical biomarker identification and validation.

Cam Anh Tran, MS, MBAProgram and Alliance Manager

Cam Anh Tran, MS, MBA

Ms. Tran is the program and alliance manager for the Belfer Center. She brings broad research and management experience from across life science, biotech, and contract research organizations. She received her M.B.A. from Simmons University and has a M.S. in biology from Tufts University.

Yanan Kuang, PhDBlood-based Biomarker Lead

YANAN KUANG, PHD

Dr. Kuang’s research focuses on plasma-based biomarker analysis and clinical assay development. Prior to joining the Belfer Center, she was a scientific lead and research project manager at Variagenics, working on generating modified thermostable polymerase for customized nucleotides and designing a high throughput SNP identification platform. Dr. Kuang received her Ph.D. degree from University of Rochester and did her postdoctoral training at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Elena Ivanova, PhDTumor Model Strategy Lead

ELENA IVANOVA, PHD

After receiving her postdoctoral training at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Ivanova started as a scientist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She has employed a broad repertoire of imaging applications in her research, from spectral karyotyping used to advance the understanding of the mechanisms behind chromosomal instability and tumorigenesis, to high-throughput screening for biomarker discovery. Currently Dr. Ivanova is evaluating mechanisms of immune- and targeted-therapy response and resistance in 3D ex vivo culture systems.

Lauren Zasadil, PhDCell Therapies Lead

LAUREN ZASADIL, PHD

Dr. Zasadil received her Ph.D. in molecular and cellular pharmacology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She joined the Belfer Center following postdoctoral training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she investigated a role for the immune system in the suppression of aneuploidy. Her research expertise is in cell division, cancer biology, translational research, and light microscopy.

Rufus hards, phdProteomics Scientist

RUFUS HARDS, PHD

Dr. Hards received his Ph.D. in biochemistry and cell biology from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College, where he studied mitotic cell signaling using mass spectrometry-based proteomics techniques. Following his post-doctoral training at Bayer, where he used mass spectrometry to characterize drug-protein interactions, he joined the Belfer Center to run the new proteomics capabilities. Dr. Hards is currently supporting the efforts to uncover critical cell-cell interactions that underlie tumor-immune cell relationships.