Alex A. Adjei
Alex A. Adjei, MD, PhD, FACP, FASCO, is the Chief of the Cleveland Clinic Cancer Institute and holds the M. Frank Rudy and Margaret D. Rudy Distinguished Chair in Translational Cancer Research at Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Adjei has had leadership roles in the National Cancer Enterprise of the US, serving in multiple roles and on several National Cancer Institute (NCI) committees. He was the Chair of the NIH Study Section NCRR reviewing CTSAs, a member of the Clinical Oncology Study Section (CONC), and the NCI IRG Subcommittee A, which reviews Cancer Centers. He was the Lung Committee Chair and Group Vice Chair of the NCCTG. He co-chaired the Clinical Trials Design Task Force, and the Thoracic Malignancies Steering Committee for two terms and co-chaired the SCLC Progress Review Group. He has chaired an external review panel for the NCI intra-mural thoracic and GI malignancies branch and has served on the Committee on Diagnosing and Treating Adult Cancers of the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He is a member of the NCI Board of Scientific Counselors, a former member of the Board of Directors of the IASLC, and the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology. He has served on numerous committees in AACR, ASCO and ESMO. His research focuses on experimental therapeutics and clinical drug development. He received the first ASCO Drug Development Research Professorship in recognition of his mentorship and work in cancer drug development. He also received the inaugural IASLC Adi F. Gazdar Merit Award for Distinguished Service in Lung Cancer in 2020 and the ESMO Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021. He has authored over 300 publications, primarily dealing with preclinical pharmacology, phase I trials, and novel therapies for lung cancer.
Andrea Bezjak
Dr. Andrea Bezjak, BMedSc, MDCM, MSc, FRCPC, FASTRO, is a Professor in the Departments of Radiation Oncology and Clinical Epidemiology & Health Care Research at the University of Toronto and Thoracic Radiation Oncologist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre/ University Health Network (PMH/UHN), Toronto, Canada. She has (co) authored more than 250 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has been a principal investigator of multi-center clinical trials in lung cancer, including the practice-defining phase I/II NRG trial of SBRT for centrally located lung cancers.
Her clinical areas are lung cancer, thymoma and metastastic disease, and her academic interests include quality of care, quality of life, education, and mentorship. She has held many leadership positions within her department. Institution, nationally and internationally, including being the Inaugural Addie MacNaughton Chair in Thoracic Radiation Oncology at PMH, Lung site group leader at UHN, President of CARO (Canadian Association of Radiation Oncology), Chair of CROF (Canadian Radiation Oncology Foundation), IASLC Board Member (2019-23), Secretary of the IASCLC Board (2021-23) and Past (co) President of the 2018 WCLC in Toronto, with her colleagues Drs Frances Shepherd, Natasha Leighl and Gail Darling.
Currently, Dr Andrea Bezjak is the Medical Director of the Princess Margaret Cancer Care Network and Director of the Radiation Oncology Residency Training Program at the University of Toronto. She is the 2024 recipient of the IASLC James D Cox Lectureship for Radiation Oncology and has been awarded FASTRO (Fellow of the American Society for Radiation Oncology) designation in 2024.
David Harpole
David Harpole is an Endowed Professor of Surgery and Pathology at Duke University, Director of the Duke Surgical Research Fellowship and the Thoracic Oncology Research Laboratory. After completing General and Thoracic Surgery training at Duke, he joined the faculty of the Harvard-Brigham and Women’s Hospital and established a research laboratory under the mentorship of Dr. Judah Folkman at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. He was recruited back to Duke to establish the Thoracic Oncology Program and translational research program.
Dr. Harpole has served in the Department of Surgery as Vice-chief of The Division of Surgical Sciences and Vice Chairman for Research. He has been active in clinical trials, acting as Chairman of the CALGB Thoracic Surgery Committee and Executive Director of the American College of Surgeons Oncology Group. He was chair of the NCI-CTEP Thoracic Malignancies Steering Committee that oversees all large clinical trials in lung cancer and mesothelioma in the US and Canada. He was also the Co-chair of the Thoracic Tumor Committee of the National Cancer Database and a Director of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the IASLC after serving on several IASLC committees. He was conference president of the 2021 World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC).
Dr. Harpole has contributed 250+ manuscripts on NSCLC and mesothelioma. He has directed a translational research laboratory for more than 25 years with continuous National Institutes of Health, Veterans Affairs, or Department of Defense grant support and has served and chaired NCI, DOD, and VA grant review study sections for more than 20 years. In clinical research, he has led many large multi-institutional lung cancer clinical trials based on his laboratory efforts and most recently co-led the international phase III Aegean Neoadjuvant Locally Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Trial.