BiliaryTractCancer near Nyack, NY

Biography: Dr. Raza is a Professor of Medicine and Director of the MDS Center at Columbia University in New York, NY. She started her research in Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS) in 1982 and moved to Rush University, Chicago, Illinois in 1992, where she was the Charles Arthur Weaver Professor in Oncology and Director, Division of Myeloid Diseases. The MDS Program, along with a Tissue Repository containing more than 50,000 samples from MDS and acute leukemia patients was successfully relocated to the University of Massachusetts in 2004 and to Columbia University in 2010. Before moving to New York, Dr. Raza was the Chief of Hematology Oncology and the Gladys Smith Martin Professor of Oncology at the University of Massachusetts in Worcester. She has published the results of her laboratory research and clinical trials in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Blood, Cancer, Cancer Research, the British Journal of Hematology, Leukemia, and Leukemia Research. Dr. Raza serves on numerous national and international panels as a reviewer, consultant, and advisor and is the recipient of a number of awards.

Biography: Dr. Iwamoto is a neuro-oncologist whose previous training includes a neurology residency at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and a neuro-oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. For over three years, Dr. Iwamoto was an attending physician and an investigator at the Neuro-oncology Branch, a trans-institute branch of the National Cancer Institute and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, in Bethesda, MD. At the intramural NIH, Dr. Iwamoto was a principal investigator in early phase clinical trials for brain tumors and worked with laboratory and computational scientists on several translational projects in brain tumors. Dr. Iwamoto was recruited to Columbia University as the Deputy Director of the Neuro-oncology Division and is actively developing the clinical and translational research components of this program. He is an expert in the diagnosis, management, and treatment of brain and spinal cord tumors as well as neurological complications of cancer.

Biography: Dr. Yoanna Pumpalova is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and medical oncologist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center where she specializes in the treatment of gastrointestinal malignancies, with a focus on colorectal and anal cancers. She received her MD from Weill Cornell Medical College and completed internship and residency training in Internal Medicine and Global Health at Stanford University. She then completed fellowship training in Medical Oncology at Columbia University/New York Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Pumpalova works as part of a multidisciplinary team with the mission of delivering compassionate and state-of-the-art oncologic care to each patient, using a precision medicine approach to provide innovative and promising treatments. Dr. Pumpalova is actively involved in translational research to understand the biological mechanisms driving early onset colorectal cancer. She collaborates with Dr. Joel Gabre, a gastroenterologist and clinician scientist and Dr. Beatrice Dionigi, colorectal surgeon, on research to understand how early onset colorectal cancer differs from average onset colorectal cancer, with the goal of uncovering novel ways to treat all patients with colorectal cancer. Dr. Pumpalova is also the site principal investigator of industry-sponsored clinical trials investigating novel therapies for the treatment of colorectal cancer. Further, Dr. Pumpalova conducts studies in low- and middle-income countries focused on early detection and screening for colorectal cancer. She has active studies in South Africa and Dominican Republic. Her research goal is to improve outcomes for patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer, regardless of where they reside. Her work has been recognized by several awards including an ASCO Young Investigator Award and ASCO Career Development Award. In the NewsColumbia Researchers Seek Answers for Rise of Colon Cancer in Younger PatientsWhat to Know About the Rise of Colorectal Cancer in Younger PeopleExploring Strategies for Earlier Colon Cancer Detection in Sub-Saharan Africa