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Speaker Biographies
Dr. Annick D. Van den Abbeele, M.D.
Annick D. Van den Abbeele, M.D. is the Chief of the Department of Imaging and Founding Director of the Center for Biomedical Imaging in Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). She is also the Co-Director of the Tumor Imaging Metrics Core at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, and an Associate Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Dr. Van den Abbeele received her B.A. and M.D. from the University of Louvain in Belgium. Following a residency in Pediatrics at the University of Louvain and a Neonatology fellowship at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, TN, she completed a residency in Nuclear Medicine and a fellowship in Radiology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), Boston, MA and HMS
Dr. Van den Abbeele is nationally and internationally known for her work in molecular imaging building upon her pioneering work in monitoring response to molecularly-targeted therapy in gastrointestinal stromal tumour. She is also a leader in developing novel applications and quality metrics in cancer imaging.
She serves on several national committees, has received several awards, has authored more than 180 scientific articles and abstracts, edited two textbooks, authored 18 chapters, and presented numerous lectures, and workshops nationally and internationally.
Dr. Sandy McEwan
Sandy McEwan is a nuclear medicine physician and Director of Oncologic Imaging at the Cross Cancer Institute, and Associate Director - Research of the Cross Cancer Institute. He also is Professor and Chair of the Department of Oncology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He attended Middlesex Hospital Medical School, University of London, England, graduating in 1975. He obtained his M.Sc. in Nuclear Medicine also from University of London in 1981, and FRCPC in Nuclear Medicine in 1986. After serving as Medical Officer in the Royal Navy and as Registrar in Oncology in Auckland, New Zealand and Senior Registrar in Nuclear Medicine at Southampton General Hospital, U.K., he emigrated to Canada in 1986. He was Professor and Chair of the Department of Radiology and Diagnostic Imaging at the University from 1992 to 1999.
In addition to his leadership duties and administrative, teaching and clinical activities, Dr. McEwan is Past President of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and is active on many committees with this organization. He was instrumental in establishing the Society's Clinical Trials Network, and is a leader of the Canadian Molecular Imaging Network. His research interests include radioisotope therapy and very low dose rate radiation effects, clinical trial development of novel molecular imaging agents and imaging biomarkers, and the translation of imaging biomarkers into clinical practice. Dr. McEwan has been instrumental in the development of the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Program at the Cross Cancer Institute, raising grant funding and donations of approximately $18 M for this project. He has over 100 publications and is frequently invited to speak at international meetings.
Dr. Timothy J. McCarthy, Ph.D., MBA
Tim J. McCarthy is a Senior Director and Head of Imaging within the Molecular Medicine group at Pfizer Inc. In this role he is responsible for the application of imaging techniques to facilitate the prosecution of compounds in the development portfolio and across all therapeutic areas. He is also focused on the application of innovative imaging technologies to accelerate drug development. Tim is an organic chemist by training and has spent time working in the field of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) both in academia (Washington University 10+ years) and industry (Pharmacia and Pfizer). Tim currently serves as President of the Academy of Molecular Imaging (AMI), and he is a founding director and past-president of the Society of Non-Invasive Imaging in Drug Development (SNIDD).
Dr. Anthony F. Shields, M.D., Ph.D.
Anthony F. Shields, M.D., Ph.D., is a Professor of Medicine and Oncology at Wayne State University School of Medicine and the Associate Center Director for Clinical Research at Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, Michigan, USA. His work focuses on the development and testing of tracers for use with positron emission tomography (PET) for the assessment of a variety of tumors (e.g. brain, lung, breast, and prostate cancers) and their response to treatment. He led the development of FLT (3'-deoxy-3'-[18F]fluorothymidine); a promising tracer for tumor proliferation, which has recently received approval as an Investigational New Drug from the Food and Drug Administration and is being tested in centers worldwide. Studies are being done to demonstrate the use of FLT for use in monitoring treatment response. His group also developed the synthesis of 18F-FMAU (1-(2'-deoxy-2'-fluoro-beta-D-arabinofuranosyl)-thymine), which was previously only available labeled with 11-C. His data indicates that FMAU may provide information on cell stress and provide a complementary measure of the effects of treatment.
Dr. Shields has also been studying labeled forms of therapeutic agents to measure tumor uptake and retention and drug pharmacokinetics. He is working with a number of investigators to incorporate PET tracer studies into the development and assessment of new therapeutic options. To date, Dr. Shields has more than 100 peer-reviewed publications. As an Associate Director within the Karmanos Cancer Institute, Dr. Shields oversees the clinical research operation, including the protocol review and monitoring process. He also works to promote clinical and translational studies. He serves as an invited participant at NIH workshops, as an ad hoc reviewer for several federal grants, served as Chair of the Colon Cancer Committee for the Michigan Department of Community Health and as a PET Standards Advisory Committee Expert for the State of Michigan. Dr. Shields is also active in the Southwest Oncology Group, Society of Nuclear Medicine, and American College of Radiology Imaging Network, the National Oncology PET Registry and was the 2005 recipient of the Peter Valk Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award from the Academy of Molecular Imaging.
Dr. Martin Pomper
Martin Pomper is Professor of Radiology, with other joint appointments, at Johns Hopkins University. He received his undergraduate, graduate and medical degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His postgraduate medical training was at Johns Hopkins and included internship (Osler Medical Service), residencies (diagnostic radiology and nuclear medicine) and fellowship (neuroradiology). He is board-certified in diagnostic radiology and nuclear medicine. He has been on the Radiology faculty at Johns Hopkins since 1996. He is currently the director of the Johns Hopkins Small Animal Imaging Resource and associate director of the In Vivo Cellular and Molecular Imaging Center, both funded by the National Cancer Institute to support molecular imaging research.
His interests are in the development of new radiopharmaceuticals, optical probes and techniques for molecular imaging of cancer and central nervous system disease. His research group consists of chemists, physicists, molecular biologists and clinicians working together toward clinical molecular imaging. He is Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Imaging and the immediate past President of the Society of Nuclear Medicine's Molecular Imaging Center of Excellence.