Faculty Biographies

October 21 and 24, 2022; Virtual Meeting

Corey Langer

Corey J. Langer, MD, FACP

University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, USA

Dr Corey Langer is a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine, where he serves as clinical director of thoracic oncology in the Abramson Cancer Center. He received his medical degree from Boston University and completed his residency in medicine at the Graduate Hospital, University of Pennsylvania, and his hematology/oncology fellowship at Presbyterian University of Pennsylvania and Fox Chase Cancer Center.

At the University of Pennsylvania, Dr Langer leads clinical research efforts in thoracic malignancy as part of the Interdisciplinary Thoracic Oncology Program and conducts research focused on the role of targeted therapy and immunotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). He also co-directs the Thoracic Translational Center of Excellence, where he concentrates on the clinical end of bench-to-bedside projects. For the past 34 years, since completing his fellowship, Dr Langer has led or co-led over 140 clinical trials in both SCLC and NSCLC, as well as mesothelioma and head and neck cancer.

Dr Langer is co-chair of the Medical Oncology Committee for NRG Cooperative Oncology Group and serves on the core thoracic committees of both NRG and the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Association for Cancer Research, and International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC). Since 2016, he has served as editor-in-chief of the IASLC Lung Cancer News.

Carlos Barrios

Carlos H. Barrios, MD

Oncology Research Center at Hospital São Lucas, PUCRS, Brazil

Dr Carlos H. Barrios is director of the Oncology Research Center at Hospital São Lucas, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Porto Alegre, Brazil. He is adjunct assistant professor of the William Harrington Latin American Program of the University of Miami School of Medicine, FL, and physician member of the Oncoclínicas Group.

Dr Barrios received his medical degree from PUCRS. He is board certified in internal medicine, having trained at the Hospital de Clínicas, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, and Jackson Memorial Hospital, University of Miami. He is also board certified in hematology and oncology, having trained at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Washington University, St Louis, MO.

Dr Barrios is a member of the Executive Board of the Breast International Group and is very interested in clinical research, participating in over 250 industry-sponsored and academic clinical trials over the last 20 years. He has many abstract presentations in national and international congresses and has contributed significantly to the literature with numerous peer-reviewed publications. He has a strong interest in the development of international research collaborations and implementation of cooperative research infrastructures in Latin America. He is cofounder and current director of the Latin American Cooperative Oncology Group, which congregates more than 100 investigators in more than 70 institutions from 14 different countries in Latin America.

Narjust Florez

Narjust Florez (Duma), MD

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Cancer Center

Dr Narjust Florez is associate director of the Cancer Care Equity Program, a thoracic medical oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Cancer Center, and a member of the faculty at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. Originally from Venezuela, she received her medical degree from Universidad Católica Nordestana in the Dominican Republic, then completed her internal medicine residency at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Newark, and fellowship in hematology-medical oncology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, where she was chief fellow from 2018–2019.

Dr Florez’s clinical interests include targeted therapy for lung cancer and the care of women with lung cancer, including their unique aspects of cancer survivorship. She is principal investigator of the Sexual Health Assessment in Women with Lung Cancer study, the largest study to date evaluating sexual dysfunction in women with lung cancer. She is also a leading and productive researcher in cancer health disparities and gender and racial discrimination in medical education and medicine. In 2019, she founded the Florez (formerly Duma) Lab, which focuses on lung cancer, social justice issues in medicine, and medical education. Since its foundation, the Duma Lab has received research funding from several national agencies and published over 30 studies and editorials.

Dr Florez is one of the co-founders of the Twitter community #LatinasInMedicine, now composed of over 8,500 members globally. She has received many awards, including the 2018 Resident of the Year Award by the National Hispanic Medical Association, the 2019 Mayo Brothers Distinguished Fellowship Award, the 2020 Rising Star Award by the National Honor Society’s Leadership Experience and Development national conference for women in hematology and oncology, and the 2021 International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer North America Cancer Care Team Award for outstanding clinical care. Her work has been published in journals such as Journal of Clinical Oncology, Nature, Cancer Cell, JAMA Oncology, Lancet Oncology, and Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and featured in various media outlets including The New York Times, STATNews, Healio, OncLive, Vox News, Business Insider, ASCO Post, and Doximity. In 2022, Dr Florez became the first Latina to hold an associate editor position in oncology as the new associate editor for diversity, equity, and inclusion at JAMA Oncology.

Barbara Melosky

Barbara Melosky, MD, FRCP

University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada

Dr Barbara Melosky is a clinical professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia and a medical oncologist at the BC Cancer Center in Vancouver, Canada. She received her medical education at the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg.

Dr Melosky specializes in thoracic malignancies. She is chair of the lung tumor group at BC Cancer and founder of the British Columbia lung cancer biobank, which is actively used for research for any interested parties.

Dr Melosky has been published extensively and is considered a national and international expert on thoracic malignancies. She sits on the executive Lung Disease Site Committee for the Canadian Cancer Trials Group. She has been chair of the annual Canadian Lung Cancer Conference, attended by over 450 participants, for the last 18 years.

Edgardo Santos

Edgardo S. Santos, MD

GenesisCare Hematology/Oncology, USA

Dr Edgardo Santos is a thoracic oncologist and medical director of research services for GenesisCare Hematology/Oncology in Aventura, FL. He is also clinical associate professor of medicine at Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, Florida Atlantic University, in Boca Raton. He obtained his medical degree in 1994 at the National University of Panama School of Medicine, then completed his internship, residency in internal medicine, and fellowship in hematology/oncology at Jackson Memorial Hospital, University of Miami School of Medicine.

Specializing in lung and head and neck cancers, Dr Santos has held leadership positions at various South Florida cancer centers and institutes as well as academic institutions such as Tulane University and the University of Miami.

Dr Santos is a founding member of Florida Precision Oncology and the Oncology Latin America Association (OLA). He is a member of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) Membership Committee and member of the Editorial Group of IASLC Lung Cancer News. He is the president of the Florida Society of Clinical Oncology (FLASCO) Foundation and Treasurer of FLASCO. He is an active member and fellow of the American College of Physicians, a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Society of Hematology, American Association for Cancer Research, the European Society for Medical Oncology, IASLC, FLASCO, and OLA. He is a former recipient of the American Cancer Society Spirit Award.

Anne Tsao

Anne S. Tsao, MD, MBA

University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA

Dr Anne S. Tsao is a professor in the Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC), Houston, where she serves as director of the mesothelioma program and director of the thoracic chemo-radiation program. She received her medical degree at the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine, IL, then completed her residency at the Indiana University Department of Internal Medicine, Indianapolis. She completed a fellowship in medical oncology at the University of Texas MDACC.

Dr Tsao is a clinician scientist and expert in the treatment of patients with thoracic and head and neck cancers. She conducts both clinical and translational laboratory research, focusing on the identification of new therapeutic targets and developing novel strategies for the treatment of aerodigestive cancers and mesothelioma. Her research focuses on individualizing cancer therapy through understanding the molecular mechanisms of disease. Her laboratory research efforts have recently identified Src kinase as a new target for therapy and have also shown that N-cadherin antibody is upregulated in mesothelioma. She is principal investigator of several active clinical trials at MDACC.

Dr Tsao has been the recipient of numerous awards, including an American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Merit Award, MD Anderson Achievement in Research Award, ASCO Young Investigator Award, ASCO Career Development Award, National Institutes of Health Clinician Scientist K12 Award, and Head and Neck Specialized Programs of Research Excellence Career Development Award. She has written several first-author publications in Journal of Clinical Oncology, CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, Cancer Epidemiology, Journal of Thoracic Oncology, Cancer, Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology, Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, and Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. She serves on the SWOG Mesothelioma Steering Committee, SWOG Lung Executive Committee, Radiation Therapy Oncology Group Lung Executive Committee, is on the scientific board of the American Radium Society, and serves as chair of the MDACC Clinical Research Committee. She lectures on both a national and international level on novel therapies in aerodigestive malignancies.

Ignacio Wistuba

Ignacio I. Wistuba, MD

MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA

Dr Ignacio I. Wistuba is division head ad interim of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and professor and chair of the Department of Translational Molecular Pathology at the University of Texas (UT) MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) in Houston. In addition, he serves as director for the Thoracic Molecular Pathology Laboratory, the UT Lung Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) Tissue Bank, the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG), and the American College of Radiology Imaging Network (ACRIN) Central Biorepository and Pathology Facility (EA CBPF). He is co-director of the pre-Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments Genomic Testing Developmental Laboratory and the MD Anderson Adaptive Patient-Oriented Longitudinal Learning and Optimization Platform, and pathologist for the SWOG Cancer Research Network Lung Cancer Committee. He earned his medical degree from Austral University of Chile, Valdivia, and thereafter completed postdoctoral training at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

Dr Wistuba’s major research interest is the elucidation of the molecular abnormalities involved in the pathogenesis and progression of lung cancer and other solid tumors. His research interests also include identifying new molecular targets, validating biomarkers for targeted therapy and immunotherapy (BATTLE and Lung Cancer Mutation Consortium trials), and identifying molecular markers (genomic intratumor heterogeneity, oncogenes activation, tumor microenvironment) associated with lung cancer and other solid tumor development, progression, and metastasis development, using annotated human specimens, and in vitro and in vivo models. Dr Wistuba has established an invaluable tissue bank resource for thoracic malignancies at MDACC, with more than 4,000 frozen and archival lung cancer and airway epithelia specimens from patients and a database of clinical, pathologic, and molecular information associated with these samples.

Dr Wistuba has published over 750 papers in peer-reviewed journals and several book chapters. He is associate editor of Annals of Oncology and senior editor of Cancer Prevention Research. He is principal investigator (PI) and co-PI on several molecular pathology and biomarker projects supported by multiple investigators and multi-institutional grants, and research agreements, including the UT Lung Cancer National Cancer Institute (NCI) SPORE grant, MDACC NCI Cancer Center Support Grants Tissue Bank and Pathology Resource, Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas Multi-Investigators Research Awards, and the NCI-U24 grants supporting the EA CBPF and the MD Anderson Cancer Center Immune Monitoring and Analysis Center.

William William

William William, MD

BP, A Beneficência Portuguesa de São Paulo, Brazil

Dr William N. William is medical director of oncology and hematology at BP, A Beneficência Portuguesa de São Paulo, Brazil, and associate professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) in Houston. He graduated from and did his internal medicine residency at the University of São Paulo, then completed his oncology fellowship at Hospital Sírio-Libanês in São Paulo and his thoracic-head and neck fellowship at MDACC. He served as faculty in the Department of Thoracic-Head and Neck Medical Oncology at MDACC for over 10 years.

Dr William is a medical oncologist caring for lung and head and neck cancer patients. His clinical and translational research career is focused on developing novel strategies for the prevention and treatment of aerodigestive tract malignancies. He is author or coauthor of over 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Lancet Oncology, Journal of Thoracic Oncology, and Clinical Cancer Research.