2023 SNO/ASCO CNS Cancer Conference
Accelerating therapeutic discovery and advancing care of patients with
primary and metastatic CNS malignancies.
Keynote Speakers
Don Nguyen
Yale School of Medicine
Don X. Nguyen was born in Montreal, Québec, Canada and obtained his BSc from McGill University in 1998. He then received his PhD degree in 2004 from the University of Rochester, NY, before pursuing his post-doctoral training as a Damon Runyon Fellow at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Institute, New York, NY. Don joined the faculty at Yale University School of Medicine in 2010, and is currently an Associate Professor (tenured) in the Department of Pathology and Medicine (Medical Oncology). He is also the Co-leader of the Cancer Signaling Networks program at the Yale Cancer Center. Don’s laboratory is focused on studying the biological and molecular determinants of lung tumor progression, drug resistance, and cancer metastasis.
Johnathan Kipnis
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
Dr. Jonathan (Jony) Kipnis is BJC Investigator, Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Immunology and Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, and Neurosurgery at Washington University in St. Louis, School of Medicine. He is also the inaugural Director of Center for Brain immunology and Glia (BIG) at Washington University. Jony graduated from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, where he was a Sir Charles Clore scholar and a recipient of distinguished prize for scientific achievements awarded by the Israeli Parliament, The Knesset. Kipnis lab focuses on the complex interactions between the immune system and the central nervous system (CNS). The goal is to elucidate the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying these interactions in neurodegenerative, neurodevelopmental, and mental disorders as well as in physiology (including healthy aging). They showed that the brain function is dependent, in part, on the function and integrity of the immune system and that immune molecules (cytokines) can play neuromodulatory roles. The fascination with immunity and its role in neurophysiology led to a breakthrough discovery of meningeal lymphatic vessels that drain the CNS into the peripheral lymph nodes and thus serve as a physical connection between the brain and the immune system. This finding challenged the prevailing mechanisms underlying CNS “immune privilege” and opened new avenues to mechanistically study the nature of neuroimmune interactions under physiological and pathological conditions. Dr. Kipnis is a member of National Academy of Medicine and among other awards, he is a recipient NIH Director’s Pioneer award for 2018 to explore in more depth neuro-immune interactions in healthy and diseased brain and National Institute on Aging MERIT award to study the role of meningeal immunity and lymphatics in aging and Alzheimer’s disease.
Preliminary Speaker List:
Stephen Bagley, University of Pennsylvania
Adrienne Boire, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Priscilla Brastianos, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School
Susan Chang, University of California, San Francisco
Benjamin Ellingson, University of California, Los Angeles
Melanie Hayden Gephart, Stanford University
Jona Hattangadi-Gluth, University of California, San Diego
Priya Kumthekar, Northwestern Medicine
Shawn Shun-Cheng Li, Western University Nancy Lin, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Minesh Mehta, Miami Cancer Institute
Seema Nagpal, Stanford University
Elena Pentsova, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Jan Remsik, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Roberta Ruda, University of Turin
Michael Taylor, Baylor College of Medicine
Humsa Venkatesh, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Jeffrey Wefel, MD Anderson Cancer Center
Jessica Wilcox, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Jonathan Yang, University of Washington
Alexandra Zimmer, Oregon Health & Science University
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