Dr. Brian Druker has devoted his career to improving the lives of cancer patients. For his contributions to medical research, Dr. Druker was nominated for the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award in 2009. Dr. Druker is most well-known for his role in developing Gleevec® for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). Dr. Druker's other career milestones include being named a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator in 2002, becoming a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2007, winning the Japan Award in 2011, and being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012. Dr. Druker received his Doctor of Medicine from the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, completed his residency in internal medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and did an oncology fellowship at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard Medical School.

From his earliest days, Dr. Druker was a dedicated researcher, winning the President's Undergraduate Research Award at the University of California, San Diego. He is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the Medal of Honor from the American Cancer Society and many other awards.

Dr. Michael Andreeff received his Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy degrees at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and additional training and faculty appointments at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York, NY, in the Departments of Pathology and Leukemia. Dr. Andreeff has been a pioneer in flow cytometry since 1971 when he established the first flow cytometry laboratory at the University of Heidelberg and organized the first European conference on flow cytometry. In 1977 he joined Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, NY, became head of the Leukemia Cell Biology and Hematopathology flow cytometry laboratory, and organized the first Clinical Cytometry Conference in 1986 and the first Molecular Cytogenetics Conference in 1990. He is a Professor of Medicine and holds the Paul and Mary Haas Chair in Genetics at MDACC. He has received uninterrupted NCI funding for over 30 years, serves as PI of the P01 grant entitled “The Therapy of AML”, participates as a PI in MDACC Leukemia, Lymphoma, Ovarian, and Breast Cancer SPORE grants, the CML P01 and additional R21 and R01 grants. He has published over 450 peer-reviewed papers, five books, and 75 book chapters. Dr. Andreeff’s group has worked extensively on drug resistance in hematopoietic malignancies and breast cancer and developed or co-developed several new therapeutic agents including the novel triterpenoids CDDO and CDDO-Me and inhibitors of Bcl-2, XIAP, survivin, MEK- and MDM2/HDM2. Over the last decade, his group has made major contributions to the understanding of micro-environment-mediated drug resistance and has developed strategies to exploit the underlying mechanisms for the treatment of hematopoietic and epithelial malignancies. His group reported the role of bone marrow-derived multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) in tumor stroma formation and developed therapeutic strategies based on this discovery.

Dr. Daniel D. Von Hoff is currently physician-in-chief and distinguished professor of translational research at Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix, Arizona. He is Chief Scientific Officer for U.S. Oncology and Scottsdale Healthcare's Clinical Research Institute. He is also a Professor of Medicine, Mayo Clinic and serves as a clinician at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. In 1989, Dr. Von Hoff was a founding director of the Institute for Drug Development at the Cancer Therapy and Research Center in San Antonio and ten years later he became Director of the Cancer Center and Professor of Medicine at the University of Arizona. In addition, Dr. Von Hoff was a founder of Ilex Oncology which obtained FDA approval for two new anticancer agents – alemtuzumab and clofarabine. Ilex was sold to Genzyme Corporation for $1 billion in 2004. Dr. Von Hoff also served a six-year term on President Bush’s National Cancer Advisory Board. He is a past president of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), was on the AACR and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)'s board of directors and is a fellow of the American College of Physicians. He is the founder of Investigational New Drugs - The Journal of New Anticancer Agents and founder and editor-in-chief of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics. Dr. Von Hoff graduated from Carroll College and received his medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He went on to complete his internship and residency in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and a fellowship in medical oncology at the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Von Hoff became a professor in the departments of Medicine and Cellular and Structural Biology at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio. He was an associate editor for two AACR journals, Clinical Cancer Research, and Cancer Research.

Dr. Stephen Howell is a distinguished professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and associate director for clinical research at the Moores UCSD Cancer Center and head of the Pharmacology and Toxicology Laboratory at the Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence at UCSD. His work focuses on the development of novel drugs and drug delivery systems for the treatment of cancer, and the molecular and genetic mechanisms underlying the development of drug resistance. He is the author of more than 300 papers. Dr. Howell conducted much of the early pharmacokinetic information and clinical trials work on intraperitoneal chemotherapy for the treatment of ovarian cancer. His laboratory has contributed importantly to the current understanding of how platinum-containing drugs enter, traffic through, and exit from ovarian cancer cells, and how such cells become resistant to these drugs. Dr. Howell is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and was trained as a medical oncologist and pharmacologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital, the National Institutes of Health and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.