Drs. Carpten and Pettigrew Are Named to Stand Up To Cancer Scientific Advisory Committee
PHILADELPHIA – June 12, 2019 – Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) with its Scientific Partner, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), announced two new members of the SU2C Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC): John D. Carpten, PhD, director of the Institute of Translational Genomics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC), and Roderic I. Pettigrew, PhD, MD, chief executive officer of Engineering Health (EnHealth) and executive dean for Engineering Medicine (EnMed), at Texas A&M University.
“We are delighted that Dr. Carpten and Dr. Pettigrew have agreed to join the SAC to help provide leadership and direction to SU2C’s scientific program,” said SAC Chair Phillip A. Sharp, PhD, institute professor, Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a Nobel laureate.
“Their expertise will be critical as SU2C continues to expand and diversify its portfolio of scientific investigations that are leading to a deeper understanding and more effective treatments for cancer in diverse populations,” Sharp said.
The SAC is composed of prestigious academic, advocacy, and industry leaders in cancer research. Its role is to provide insight and guidance to SU2C, setting direction for SU2C’s research initiatives, reviewing proposals for new grant awards, and conducting rigorous oversight of all active grants in the SU2C portfolio.
Carpten is an internationally recognized expert in genome science and a pioneer in understanding the role of biology in disparate cancer incidence and mortality rates among underrepresented populations. He is chairperson-elect of the AACR’s Minorities in Cancer Research (MICR) Council and was Program Committee chair of AACR’s Annual Meeting 2019 in Atlanta, which attracted more than 21,000 laboratory researchers, clinicians, patient advocates, and other oncology professionals. Carpten also serves on the SU2C committee focused on health equity in cancer clinical trials.
He earned his doctorate in 1994 from the Department of Molecular Genetics at The Ohio State University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cancer genetics at the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He went on to the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix, Arizona, where became deputy director of basic research. In 2016, he joined USC’s medical school as professor and chair of a new Department of Translational Genomics and as director of a new Institute of Translational Genomics.
Pettigrew was the founding director of the U.S. National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) of the NIH, serving 2002-2017. He oversaw $5 billion in research investments and is credited with building it into the signature NIH institute for emerging medical technologies.
His newest undertaking is EnHealth, an initiative to integrate engineering into all of the colleges of a university that are a part of the health care enterprise. EnMed is the first constituent initiative in a joint partnership between Texas A&M and Houston Methodist Hospital, to create a new training program that integrates engineering into medical training to develop a new kind of engineering-minded physician who invents solutions to health care problems. Each graduate simultaneously earns both an MD and a master’s degree in engineering and is required to invent something to address a health care challenge during his or her four years of study.
Pettigrew received a doctorate in radiation physics from MIT and finished his medical training at the University of California San Diego. He is known internationally for his pioneering work involving four-dimensional imaging of the cardiovascular system using magnetic resonance. An expert in the convergence of the life sciences, the physical sciences, and engineering, he has expertise in nanotechnology, regenerative medicine, and point-of-care technologies.
Since its inception in 2008, SU2C has launched 26 ‘Dream Teams’ of top researchers at different leading institutions, each attacking a specific cancer or problem in cancer research, among a total of 101 team science grants. SU2C has also awarded 46 Innovative Research Grants (IRG) to early-career scientists to support cutting-edge cancer research that would be deemed too high-risk to receive funding through traditional channels.