Check out the 2025 RET Research Update recording and recap of the presentations. Watch Now
Our Scientific Advisory Board is comprised of researchers, scientists, medical professionals, and thought leaders committed to finding new ways to treat and cure RET-positive lung cancer.
Together, the Scientific Advisory Board guides the scientific way forward for treating RET+ Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer by:
Chair, The Happy Lungs Project Scientific Advisory Board
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Dr. Rotow is a thoracic medical oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she is the clinical director and research director for Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology and is an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. She received her MD from the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, completed her residency training in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and her fellowship training in Hematology/Oncology at the University of California San Francisco.
In addition to her clinical practice caring for patients with thoracic malignancies, her research interests focus on the management of oncogene-driven non-small cell lung cancer where she studies outcomes and novel treatment strategies for oncogenic driver-defined cancers including EGFR, HER2, and RET. She is a member of the Chen-Huang Center for EGFR Mutant Lung Cancers at Dana-Farber and has served as the principal investigator on interventional studies evaluating novel therapeutics for treatment of oncogene-driven non-small lung cancer.
Assistant Professor, Medical Oncology
Paris-Saclay University
Gustave Roussy
Villejuif, France
Mihaela Aldea, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Paris-Saclay University and a medical oncologist in the Thoracic Cancer Group at Gustave Roussy in Villejuif, France. She obtained her medical degree from the Iuliu Hațieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and completed her medical oncology training at Gustave Roussy, France. She was a visiting scientist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston for two years.
Dr Aldea conducts collaborative clinical and translational research, with a particular focus on biomarkers of tumor response and resistance and on RET-positive lung cancer. She leads the RET-MAP global registry dedicated to characterizing RET fusion–positive lung cancer, involving collaborations with more than 40 centers worldwide and data from more than 500 patients.
Dr Aldea is an active member of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) and a current member of the Education Committee of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC). She is a recipient of the L’Oréal–UNESCO For Women in Science Award and the IASLC Young Investigator Award.
Stanford Cancer Institute
Steven Artandi, MD, PhD is the Laurie Kraus Lacob Director of the Stanford Cancer Institute and the Jerome and Daisy Low Gilbert Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at Stanford University. He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University, and MD and PhD degrees from Columbia University. He trained in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and in Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute before joining the Stanford faculty in 2000. Dr. Artandi is an oncologist and cancer biologist whose research work has focused on the role played by the enzyme telomerase in cancer, aging and stem cell function. His work has produced new insights into the origins of cancer, revealing how telomerase endows cells with immortal growth properties and how aspiring cancers circumvent critical bottlenecks encountered during carcinogenesis. He has received a number of awards including an Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Cancer Institute and is an elected member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He serves on the Editorial Boards of the journals Molecular Cancer Research and Stem Cells.
James Thoracic Oncology Center
David Carbone is Professor of Internal Medicine, Director of the James Thoracic Oncology Center at the OSUMC and holds the Barbara J. Bonner Chair in Lung Research. He graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College in 1977 and received an MD and PhD in Molecular Biology and Genetics at Johns Hopkins University in 1985. He then did an Internal Medicine internship and residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital through 1988 followed by a Medical Oncology fellowship at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD. At Vanderbilt he was Professor of Medicine, Cell Biology, and Cancer Biology, and Director of the Thoracic/Head and Neck Cancer Program, Director and Principal Investigator of the Vanderbilt Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) in Lung Cancer for 11 years and PI of the Strategic Partnering to Evaluate Cancer Signatures (SPECS) in Lung Cancer UO1 consortium. He was recruited to The Ohio State University in 2012 to direct the James Thoracic Oncology Center.
His research interests, grant support and publications have been focused on lung cancer, and specifically lung cancer genetics, cancer immunotherapy, tumor-associated immunosuppression mechanisms. He has over 300+ peer-reviewed publications, books and review articles, has served on several NCI grant review panels, including the clinical program project parent committee, and has continuous NCI funding since early in his career. He has served on the Board of Scientific Counselors for the NCI and as Chair of the Lung Biology subcommittee for the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group. He is a Past President of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) and currently co-chair of the NCI/CTEP Thoracic Malignancy Steering Committee.
Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Dr. Alexander Drilon is the Chief of the Early Drug Development Service and an Associate Attending Physician of the Thoracic Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. His research focuses on the development of targeted therapy for genomic subsets of lung cancer and other solid tumors, including cancers that harbor fusions involving ALK, ROS1, RET, and NTRK1/2/3, and MET exon 14 skipping alterations. He is a recipient of American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO)/Conquer Cancer Foundation Career Development and Young Investigator Awards, and grants from the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer and the Lung Cancer Research Foundation. Dr. Drilon is also a member of the Editorial Board of ASCO University.
Massachusetts General Hospital
Justin Gainor is the Director of the Center for Thoracic Cancers at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Director of Targeted Immunotherapy in the Henri and Belinda Termeer Center for Targeted Therapies, and Co-Leader of the SU2C Lung Cancer Dream Team. His major research interests have centered around two themes: targeted therapy and immunotherapy. Currently, he is the principal investigator of multiple clinical trials evaluating novel targeted therapies among patients with oncogene-driven lung cancers, with a particular focus on oncogenic fusions involving anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) and RET. To complement these efforts, he has also led efforts to define the molecular mechanisms of resistance to targeted therapies.
More recently, he has worked to transfer the same clinical-translational research framework pioneered in targeted therapies to the immunotherapy setting. His early efforts in this regard have focused on exploring the activity of immune checkpoint inhibitors among patients with oncogene-driven lung cancers. His current research focus is to elucidate predictors of response and resistance to immune checkpoint inhibitors. These translational studies are complemented by a robust portfolio of phase I/II trials examining novel immunotherapy combinations.
MD Anderson Cancer Center
Dr. Heymach is the Chair of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He holds the David Bruton Endowed Chair in Cancer Research. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and his MD/PhD from Stanford. He completed his Internship and Residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and his fellowship in Medical Oncology from the Dana Farber/Mass General Brigham program. As a physician-scientist, Dr. Heymach’s research focuses on investigating mechanisms of therapeutic resistance to targeted agents, understanding the regulation of angiogenesis in lung cancer, and the development of biomarkers for targeted agents and immunotherapy. His research has led to new therapeutic approaches for KRAS mutant lung cancer, small cell lung cancer (SCLC), EGFR mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), adenoid cystic carcinoma, and oligometastatic NSCLC, many of which are now considered standard of care regimens or undergoing clinical testing. He serves as PI on 4 R01 awards investigating molecular subsets of lung cancer, and on an U01 focused on SCLC. He serves as the MDACC PI for the SU2C-ACS Lung Cancer Dream Team targeting KRAS mutant lung cancers, as the leader of the Lung CCSG Program, and the co-leader of the Lung Cancer Moon Shot. He is also the co-PI and project leader of the Lung SPORE. As a clinical investigator, he leads a number of biomarker-directed clinical trials using targeted and immunotherapy agents in lung cancer. He has directly mentored numerous fellows, including physician-scientists, and serves as chair of the NCI Molecular Cancer Therapeutics-1 study section.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Dr. Marc Ladanyi is the Chief of Molecular Diagnostics Service and William J. Ruane Chair in Molecular Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Ladanyi’s laboratory focuses on the genomics and molecular pathogenesis of sarcomas and thoracic malignancies, with an emphasis on clinical translation of potential diagnostic markers and therapeutic targets. Dr. Ladanyi also co-directs (with Chris Sander) the Genome Data Analysis Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering, which is part of the TCGA project network.
Examples of recent contributions include the validation of DUSP4 as a driver gene for 8p losses in EGFR-mutant lung adenocarcinomas, the establishment of methods for enhanced detection of the EGFR T790M secondary mutation in the setting of acquired resistance to EGFR inhibitors, the discovery of BAP1 mutations in mesotheliomas with 3p losses, the identification of novel, recurrent HEY1-NCOA2 and KIF5B-RET fusions in mesenchymal chondrosarcoma and lung adenocarcinoma, respectively, both based on mining of exon-level expression data, as well as major involvement in the TCGA Network marker papers on the genomics of glioblastoma, ovarian carcinoma, and squamous lung cancer.
Attending Physician, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Jessica Lin is a medical oncologist specializing in the care of patients with thoracic malignancies. Dr. Lin received her MD from Harvard Medical School, Boston. After completing her residency in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and fellowship in medical oncology at the Dana-Farber/Partners CancerCare program, she joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. She has an active practice caring for patients in the Thoracic Oncology Program and the Henri and Belinda Termeer Center for Targeted Therapies.
The primary focus of Dr. Lin’s research is to develop novel therapeutic and biomarker strategies for patients with advanced lung cancers. As a clinical investigator, she is deeply involved in the design and conduct of clinical trials evaluating novel therapeutic agents. Her translational research efforts are dedicated to the study of resistance mechanisms and exceptional responses to targeted therapies in molecularly defined subsets of lung cancer, such as those harboring ALK, ROS1, or RET gene fusions. The ultimate goal of her research is to improve outcomes for patients living with lung cancer.
Dr. Lin is a member of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, American Association for Cancer Research, European Society for Medical Oncology, and American Society of Clinical Oncology.
MD Anderson
Dr. Reuben is an Assistant Professor at MD Anderson in the Department of Thoracic/Head & Neck Medical Oncology and the Director of the Immunology Program at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. He obtained his Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences in 2014 at the University of Montreal in Canada and established his lab at MD Anderson in 2018. Since then, his lab has focused on developing and optimizing cellular immunotherapy for the treatment of solid tumors with a particular interest in lung cancer. Dr. Reuben’s lab has discovered and validated 21 T cell receptors targeting different classes of prevalent tumor antigens (EGFR, KRAS, HER2, etc) which are now in the process of being translated into the clinic. Dr. Reuben’s lab has also developed a microfluidic platform that allows the rapid unbiased identification and isolation of the T cells most clinically-relevant to each patient’s disease. This platform is now being used to improve upon the efficacy of cellular therapies in solid tumors and in the setting of other diseases. Dr. Reuben has published more than 120 papers including in many of the top journals in the field. His contributions have pertained to characterization of tumor heterogeneity, identification of biomarkers and mechanisms of response and resistance to therapy, and analysis of T cell repertoire and responses in solid tumors.
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