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Dr. Phil Branton obtained his PhD in 1972 at the Ontario Cancer Institute, University of Toronto.
Following post-doctoral studies at MIT, he became a professeur adjoint at the Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec, then moved in 1975 to the cancer research group at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, where he ultimately became professor of pathology and the group's co-ordinator.
He moved to McGill University as chair of biochemistry (1990-2000), and in 1996 was named Gilman Cheney Professor. In 2000, he was named the first scientific director of the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
His honours include being made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2002 and in 2005 being awarded the R.M. Taylor Medal from the Canadian Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute of Canada (NCIC). He is currently a visiting scientist with Cancer Research U.K.
He is co-founder of GeminX Biotechnologies Inc. and is known for basic research on adenoviruses, cell death, protein degradation and tumour suppressors.
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Dr. Heather Bryant is vice-president, cancer control for the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer, an independent organization funded by the federal government to accelerate action on cancer control for all Canadians. She joined CPAC in January 2008 after serving as vice-president and chief information officer and director of the Division of Population Health and Information for the Alberta Cancer Board.
At the Alberta Cancer Board, she was responsible for the cancer registry, screening and prevention programs, as well as an active research unit in cancer epidemiology and prevention. In addition, she led electronic health record implementation.
Dr. Bryant studied medicine at the University of Calgary and took her first residency certification in family medicine. She followed this with a fellowship in community medicine and a PhD in epidemiology, also at the University of Calgary. Dr. Bryant joined the Alberta Cancer Board in 1990. Before that she was a faculty member at the University of Calgary while also a medical officer of health in the Drumheller Health Unit.
Dr. Bryant has been active on many national committees and chaired the national committee for the Canadian Breast Cancer Screening Initiative (Health Canada), the joint advisory committee on cancer control (National Cancer Institute of Canada) and the population health committee (Medical Research Council). She currently chairs the Institute Advisory Board for Cancer for Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the Partnership team working on the National Colorectal Screening Network. Dr. Bryant is also a clinical professor in the departments of Community Health Sciences and Oncology at the University of Calgary.
(Bio and photo: Courtesy Canadian Partnership Against Cancer)
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Dr. Parkinson is the president and CEO of Nodality, a biotechnology company based in San Francisco, California which is focused on the biological characterization of signaling pathways in patients with malignancy to enable more effective therapeutics development and decision-making.
Until October 2007, Dr. Parkinson was senior vice-president, oncology research and development at Biogen Idec. At Biogen Idec he oversaw all oncology discovery research efforts and the development of the oncology pipeline. Previously he was vice-president, oncology development, at Amgen and vice-president, global clinical oncology development, at Novartis. During his tenures at Amgen and Novartis, Dr. Parkinson was responsible for clinical development activities leading to a series of successful global drug registrations for important cancer therapeutics, including Gleevec, Femara, Zometa, Kepivance, and Vectibix.
Dr. Parkinson worked at the National Cancer Institute from 1990 to 1997, serving as chief of the investigational drug branch, then as acting associate director of the cancer therapy evaluation program. He has also held academic positions at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, University of Texas and New England Medical Center of Tufts University School of Medicine.
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For the past seven years, Dr. Jerome Yates has been national vice-president for research for the American Cancer Society.
He is a former senior vice-president for population sciences and senior vice-president for clinical affairs at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, where he served for 14 years.
He received his MD from the University of Illinois (Chicago) and his MPH from Harvard University. He was trained in medical oncology and is certified by the American College of Physician Executives.
Early in his oncology career, he conducted studies of patients undergoing aggressive treatment or bone marrow transplantation for acute leukemia at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York. The "7 & 3" induction therapy for Acute Myelocytic Leukemia (AML) was developed and published in the early seventies and became the standard therapy for more than two decades in the United States, and remains the standard for remission induction in many other parts of the world.
For the next phase of his career, he was a founder director of the cancer centre at the University of Vermont. His palliative care research led to the evaluation of the hospice demonstration projects funded by the U.S. health care finance administration (now known as the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). He served on the evaluation oversight committee convened by the Institute of Medicine to develop the basis for the subsequent hospice regulations.
As the National Cancer Institute's associate director for centers and community oncology, he led a team that developed the Community Clinical Oncology Program (CCOP). He also pushed for the evaluation of the CCOPs and other NCI programs aimed at enhancing co-operative group clinical and cancer control trials.
He has served on a variety of advisory committees for cancer centres in the U.S. and internationally (including the advisory committee on research for the Alberta Cancer Board). He has served on a variety of peer review committees and has approximately 100 peer-reviewed publications.
