For the Media: Scientific and Clinical Experts

Harlan Levine, M.D., is president of strategy and business ventures for City of Hope. In this role, he is accountable for strategy, innovation and growth, drug commercialization, payer strategies and the Center for International Medicine. He also serves as the chairman of the board of AccessHope, City of Hope’s subsidiary focused on serving the employer market and making leading-edge cancer care available to all regardless of geography.

Malkas, the M.T.; B.A. Ahmadinia Professor in Molecular Oncology, focuses on how to create therapies to thwart cancer at the molecular level. She developed a therapy against neuroblastoma, a children’s cancer, which will soon be tested in a clinical trial.

As deputy director of the T Cell Therapeutics Research Laboratory, Christine Brown, Ph.D., The Heritage Provider Network Professor in Immunotherapy, provides scientific oversight for the preclinical research program, as well as the ongoing clinical trial program focused on the development of CAR-engineered T cells for the treatment of hematological malignancies and solid tumors.

Wang is a research professor in the Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation at City of Hope. She researches immunotherapy, including vaccines, as well as CAR T cell therapy in multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and acute lymphocytic leukemia.

Tristan Scott, Ph.D., is an assistant research professor within the Center for Gene Therapy at City of Hope. He obtained his Ph.D. in molecular medicine and hematology, with an accompanying postdoctoral fellowship at the University of the Witwatersrand. His research has primarily focused on developing and applying protein- and RNA-guided technologies, including RNA interference, CRISPR/Cas and Zinc-finger technology for gene therapy applications toward infectious agents and cancers driven by viral agents. He has also developed various "classic" gene replacement or precision gene-editing cure approaches for hereditary diseases. He has explored a wide range of biological delivery systems, such as adeno-associated viruses, lentiviral vectors, lipid nanoparticles and extracellular vesicles for gene delivery. The overall focus of his research is the development of novel cellular and gene therapies against viral pathogens and inherited disorders with a significant global health burden.

Outgoing president of the American Association of Cancer Research, Caligiuri is the Deana and Steve Campbell Physician- in-Chief Distinguished Chair and is recognized for his work in immunology, specifically the use of human natural killer cells. More than 1,000 cancer patients have been treated in clinical trials developed or co-developed by Caligiuri.

For more than three decades, Matthew Loscalzo has worked tirelessly to change the culture of treatment beyond simply curing disease. He is both pioneer and innovator, seeing to the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and social needs of patients, their loved ones and their caregivers.