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J. Koudy Williams, DVM
Professor, Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM), Department of Pathology/Section on Comparative Medicine
I have been at Wake Forest University for 34 years. During that time, my research focus has been women’s health. While now a faculty member of Regenerative Medicine, my past research focused on the use of animal models to explore regenerative medicine approaches for diseases urogenital systems. I have been funded by the NIH (NIDDK) to explore regenerative therapies for urinary sphincter dysfunction and have been involved from the beginning in the uterine regeneration project. I have focused my studies on regenerative medicine approaches to urogenital tissues using cells and small molecules to stimulate tissue regeneration.
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Marissa Howard-McNatt, MD, FACS
Director Breast Care Center, Associate Professor Department of Surgery, Wake Forest Baptist Health
I am a participating faculty and mentor in breast cancer surgery and research efforts at the Wake Forest School of Medicine and the Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center. My research efforts center around BRCA status, breast cancer in minority and elderly women, and breast cancer surgical choice. I am also participating in outcomes in breast cancer treatments, especially related to disparities issues. Currently, I am an Associate Professor of Surgery in the Division of Surgical Oncology and an affiliate in the Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity. I am the Director of the Breast Care Center, and the only breast fellowship-trained surgeon in western North Carolina. I have presented my research at several national meetings including the Society of Surgical Oncology, American Society of Breast Surgeons, Society of Black Academic Surgeons and American Society of Breast Disease. I serve as the Chair of the CME Committee in the Society of Surgical Oncology. I also sit on the Publications committee of the American Society of Breast Surgeons and the Society of Surgical Oncology. I am Wake Forest Baptist’s Cancer Liaison Physician for the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons and the American Cancer Society. I also serve as the Wake Forest National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers (NAPBC) representative. For the Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center, I serve on the Safety and Toxicity Review Committee and the Breast Disease-Oriented Team. I am also a Cancer Health Equity Advisory Group member.
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Oral Presentations
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Graça Almeida-Porada, MD, PhD
Professor of Regenerative Medicine, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Professor of Hematology and Oncology, Director Fetal Research and Therapies Center, Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM), Wake Forest School of Medicine
Dr. Almeida-Porada’s research focuses on the development of cellular and gene delivery platforms to treat genetic and immune-mediated diseases. She is particularly interested in improving the outcome of stem cell transplantation and gene therapy in fetal and neonatal patients with genetic disorders, and in developing therapies for children with immune-mediated diseases. She is currently supported by NHLBI to investigate prenatal and post-natal therapies in Hemophilia A and to manufacture a cell and gene therapy platform to treat hemophilia A. She is the Director of the Fetal Research and Therapy Center at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. She the co-editor-in-chief of Current Stem Cell Reports and the co-founder of the International Fetal Transplantation and Immunology Society.
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Akiko Chiba, MD
Assistant Professor of Surgery, Surgical Oncology Division, Wake Forest Baptist Heath
Dr. Akiko Chiba is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the Wake Forest Baptist Health in the department of surgical oncology. She joined as a faculty in 2016 after completing her Breast Surgical Oncology fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. Dr. Chiba has a strong interest in clinical and translational research focusing in breast cancer. She has a passion for treating young women with breast cancer as well as those with genetic mutation and women with increased risk of breast cancer. Her research interest includes breast microbiome, surgical techniques such as nipple-sparing mastectomy, and genetic mutation/high risk patients. Dr. Chiba has written numerous peer-review journal in the field of breast cancer and is a fellow of American College of Surgeons, committee member of American Society of Breast Surgeons, and Society of Surgical Oncology.
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Kerry Danelson, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Wake Forest School of Medicine
Dr. Danelson graduated from the United States Military Academy with a BS in Mechanical Engineering and Wake Forest University with a PhD in Injury Biomechanics. Her research focus is on safety system design with a goal of understanding injury tolerance through mechanical testing and finite element analysis. Her recent work has focused on military safety and the Warrior Injury Assessment Manikin (WIAMan). For the WIAMan program she led the effort to compare theater injuries to the PHMS damage observed during experimental testing. She also worked with the Accelerative Loading Fixture team to assess male and female PMHS damage following accelerative loading.
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 Jelena M. Janjic, PhD, "Dr. J"
Associate Professor of Pharmaceutics, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA; Founder/Co-Director Chronic Pain Research Consortium, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA
Jelena M. Janjic, PhD, “DrJ” earned her pharmacy degree from Belgrade Univer¬sity, S.R. Yugoslavia, and her doctorate in medicinal chemistry/pharmaceutical sciences from the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy. She completed post-doctoral training at Scripps Florida and Carnegie Mellon University. She has been a full-time faculty member at Duquesne University Pharmacy School since 2009. She is the founder and co-director of the Chronic Pain Research Consortium at Duquesne since 2011, where she has pioneered theranostic pain nanomedicine. She also serves as an ORISE faculty fellow with USA Airforce and is a faculty member of McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Pittsburgh. She has received multiple awards including Pittsburgh Innovator Award and Presidential Award of Excellence in Scholarship at Duquesne University. Her work on pain nanomedicine has been supported by NIDA, NIBIB, CDMRP and USAF. In recent years she expanded her nanotechnology work to regenerative medicine where she focuses on local immunosuppression, imaging and diagnostic reagent development and organ preservation, which is all fully supported by CDMRP. Her lab specializes in manufacturing of nanomedicines, injectables and implantable biomaterials and hydrogels, and applies quality by design methodologies to complex multifunctional (therapeutic/diagnostic) product development. Her work is interdisciplinary and collaborative with national and international partnerships including Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA Air force, Daiichi University of Pharmacy (Japan) and others. Dr. Janjic is a mentor and educator in pharmacology, medicinal chemistry and pharmaceutics, teaching in PharmD and graduate programs. She also writes fiction and music and is also an active classical and contemporary musician.
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 Bethany Kerr, PhD
Assistant Professor, Cancer Biology, Wake Forest School of Medicine
Dr. Bethany Kerr works to understand how cancers metastasize or spread to the bone. She utilizes cancer cell biology, live imaging, animal models, and tissue-engineered models to uncover the mechanisms controlling metastasis to develop new treatments to prevent the spread of cancer. She is an Assistant Professor at the Wake Forest School of Medicine in the Departments of Cancer Biology, Orthopaedic Surgery, Biomedical Engineering, and Urology and is a member of the Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center. She has received several awards for her academic work and has been funded by an NIH F32 Individual NRSA, an NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award, a Pardee Foundation Award, and a METAvivor Translational Research Award. Dr. Kerr has a B.E. double majoring in Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering from Vanderbilt University and a Ph.D. in Regenerative Medicine from Thomas Jefferson University.
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 Neveen Said, MD, PhD
Associate Professor, Cancer Biology, Pathology and Urology, Wake Forest School of Medicine and Comprehensive Cancer Center
My ongoing and earlier studies are focused on investigating the role of tumor microenvironment in modulation of tumor progression and metastasis. I am specifically interested in the differential roles of the cellular and non-cellular components of the primary and metastatic tumor microenvironment as positive and negative regulators of cancer cell interactions, emphasizing on inflammation, tumor suppressors and metabolic programing. I have developed many preclinical models using primary and established cancer cells in homotypic and heterotypic cultures with stromal fibroblasts, smooth muscle cells, adipocytes, macrophages, and endothelial cells. We have also developed preclinical mouse models to study the multi-step cascade of cancer initiation, progression, and metastasis. I have reported a tumor suppressor effect of an extracellular matrix protein “SPARC” in ovarian cancer and reported that both tumor- and stromal-derived SPARC regulate of the interactions of ovarian cancer cells with the cellular and soluble components of the peritoneal microenvironment and ascitic fluid; thus normalizing the reactive ovarian microenvironment and associated inflammation. Importantly, we were the first to report that SPARC is subject to epigenetic silencing in advanced stage disease. My lab is currently performing multiple phenotypic screens to identify, validate and develop therapeutics that restore the expression, and activity and function of tumor and metastasis suppressor genes in ovarian, and bladder cancers and can be expanded to other cancers as well.
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 Shay Soker, PhD
Professor of Regenerative Medicine, Chief Science Program Officer, Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM), Wake Forest School of Medicine
Dr. Soker is a Professor of Regenerative Medicine, Biomedical Engineering and Cancer Biology at the Wake Forest School of Medicine and the Chief Science Program Officer at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Dr. Soker’s research focuses on multiple aspects of regenerative medicine including identification of new sources of cells and scaffolds for tissue engineering, tissue neovascularization, real-time imaging technologies and fabrication of bioengineered tissues as developmental and disease models. Specific examples are the use of tissue-derived extracellular matrices as scaffolds for whole organ bioengineering. His lab has published a seminal manuscript describing, for the first time, the making of functional small human livers from liver progenitor cells. Using a similar approach, his lab developed small, 3D tissue constructs (organoids) for testing of new drugs without the need to tests in animals. The organoids are used to study human organogenesis in vitro and disease modeling, including tissue fibrosis and cancer. This technology will allow to develop new drugs to treat many diseases and test them on cells derived from individual patients. Based this work, a new Wake Forest Organoid Research Center (WFORCE) was recently established, on which he serves as the scientific director. WFORCE has a goal to make the tumor organoid platform available to clinicians who search for the best treatment for individual patients and basic researchers who are looking for advanced in vitro tumor models.
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 David R. Soto-Pantoja, PhD,
Assistant Professor Department of Surgery, Department of Cancer Biology, Comprehensive Cancer Center, Wake Forest School of Medicine
David R. Soto-Pantoja, PhD received his BS in Biology from the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez Campus and his PhD in in Molecular Genetics & Genomics from Wake Forest School of Medicine. He received the Cancer Research Training Award to complete his post-doctoral research fellowship Laboratory of Pathology of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), where he devoted his efforts in understanding responses of ionizing radiation in normal tissue injury as well as contributing to establishing CD47 as cancer immunotherapy target. After his postdoctoral training, he received the NCI Transition Career Development Award-K22 and began his independent career as an Assistant Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. The research in his lab focuses on examining mechanism of immune cell metabolism to enhance responses to immunotherapy to prevent and treat aggressive cancers. He also studies off-target effects of cancer therapy in the cardiovascular system with the aim at improving the quality of life of cancer patients. Dr. Pantoja’s research program serves as a platform to mentor students from diverse levels and backgrounds so they can continue to pursue careers in science.
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