Kraft Prize Symposium
Kraft Prize Symposium
Overview
Since 2006, the MGH Center for Cancer Research has annually honored a luminary in the field - an extraordinary scientist, who has made major advances in our understanding of cancer and its treatment, and has been recognized as a true mentor by teaching and inspiring the next generation of cancer researchers. This year, the 2023 Kraft Award will be presented to Michelle, Monje, MD, PhD of Stanford University for her groundbreaking work in Neuro-Oncology. Previous recipients of the MGH Award in Cancer Research (preceding the endowment of this award in honor of Jonathan Kraft) include: Drs. Anton Berns, Joan Massague, Titia de Lange, Bert Vogelstein, Charles Sawyers, Michael Stratton, Craig Thompson, James Allison, and Hans Clevers. In 2015, Dr. David Allis was the first recipient of the named Jonathan Kraft Award. In subsequent years, the Award has been given to Drs. Joan Steitz, Kevan Shokat, Charles Swanton, Carl June and Aviv Regev.
2023 Event & Agenda
2023 Jonathan Kraft Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research
Tuesday, May 2, 2023 | 1:30pm-5:30pm
Starr Center, Simches Building, 2nd Floor
185 Cambridge Street, Boston, MA 02114
1:30pm - Welcome and Opening Remarks
Daniel Haber, PhD
Director
Mass General Cancer Center
Introductions
Mario L. Suvà, MD, PhD
Chair
Associate Professor of Pathology
Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School
Bio: Dr. Mario Suva is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology and the Center for Cancer Research at MGH and an Institute Member at the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard. His expertise is in neuro-oncology and single-cell genomics.
Dr. Suvà obtained his MD and PhD in Lausanne, Switzerland, studying cancer stem cells in gliomas and sarcomas. He did his post-doctoral research at MGH with Brad Bernstein, applying chromatin analysis and functional approaches to identify master regulators of glioma stem cell programs. Dr. Suvà's laboratory focuses on diffuse gliomas in adults and children. A particular effort of the laboratory is on dissecting the heterogeneity of patient tumors and relating transcriptional and genetic programs of individual cancer cells. Dr. Suvà directed pioneering studies characterizing glioblastoma, oligodendroglioma, astrocytoma and pediatric gliomas with single-cell genomic technologies, shedding light on tumor heterogeneity, tumor classification, glioma cell lineages, cancer stem cell programs, tumor evolution and the composition of the tumor microenvironment.
1:40pm - "Developmental pathways and spatial architecture of pediatric high-grade glioma"
Mariella G. Filbin, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
Co-Director, Brain Tumor Center of Excellence
Research Director, Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Program, Dana-Farber & Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Bio: Dr. Mariella Filbert is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Research Co-Director of Pediatric Neuro-Oncology at the Dana- Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center. Beside her dedicated role as a Physician, providing comprehensive care to children with brain and spinal cord tumors, her research focuses on establishing networks of tumor dependencies in pediatric brain tumors with the goal of finding new targeted therapies. Concentrating in particular on high-grade gliomas, including DIPG and malignant embryonal brain tumors, Dr. Filbin is interested in the developmental and cellular contexts in which tumorigenic mutations arise and shape the cellular hierarchy of the resulting tumors. Her work has been recognized by the National Institute of Health and other organizations, and is making a significant impact in the field of Pediatric Oncology.
2:10pm - "CAR T cells for glioblastoma"
Marcela V. Maus, MD, PhD
Paula O’Keefe Associate Professor of Medicine
Director, Cellular Immunotherapy Program
Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Associate Member, Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard
Bio: Dr. Marcela V. Maus is Director of Cellular Immunotherapy at the Mass General Cancer Center. She is the Paula O’Keefe Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and an Associate Member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She is an internationally known translational scientist and immunologist, in particular for her work in developing engineered T cell therapies. Her laboratory is generating new forms of chimeric antigen receptors directed to new targets and bringing them to the clinical setting to treat patients with hematologic malignancies and solid tumors. Dr. Maus trained in internal medicine at University of Pennsylvania and at Memorial Sloan Kettering as a hematologist and medical oncologist.
2:40pm - Break
3:00pm - "Evolution of Tumor and the Immune Microenvironment in Central Nervous System Metastases"
Priscilla K. Brastianos, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine
Director, Central Nervous System Metastasis Center
Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School
Bio: Dr. Priscilla Brastianos is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School. Originally from Vancouver, BC, Dr. Brastianos completed her medical school and internal medicine residency at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and fellowship training in Hematology/Oncology and Neuro-Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital. She is now Director of the Central Nervous System Metastasis Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and leads a multi-R01-funded laboratory. Dr. Brastianos’ research focuses on understanding the genomic mechanisms that drive primary and metastatic brain tumors. She has led studies which have identified novel therapeutic targets in brain tumors and she has translated her scientific findings to national multicenter trials. She also leads a multidisciplinary central nervous system metastasis clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Dr. Brastianos has received a number of awards for her work including a ‘NextGen Star’ award by the American Association for Cancer Research, a Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award, a Breast Cancer Research Foundation Award, a Susan G. Komen Career Catalyst Award, the American Brain Tumor Association Joel Gingras Award and the Anne Klibanski Award for Excellence in Mentorship.
3:30pm - "The Neural Regulation of Small Cell Lung Cancer Progression"
Humsa Venkatesh, PhD
Assistant Professor of Neurology
Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Bio: Dr. Humsa Venkatesh is an Assistant Professor at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Her research studies the reciprocal interactions between the nervous system and cancers. Her work emphasizes the electrical components of tumor pathophysiology and highlights the extent to which the neural activity controls and facilitate disease progression. The understanding of these co-opting mechanisms has led to novel strategies to broadly treat cancers, by disabling their ability to electrically integrate into neural circuitry. Her pioneering research in this emerging field of cancer neuroscience aims to harness the systems level microenvironmental dependencies of tumor growth to develop innovative therapeutic treatments.
Dr. Venkatesh received her undergraduate degree in Chemical Biology from the University of California, Berkeley and her PhD in Cancer Biology from Stanford University. She has now started a Cancer Neuroscience research program at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She has been recognized by the Charles Hood Foundation, the Sontag Foundation, and the ChadTough Foundation as a promising early investigator.
4:00pm - Break
4:20pm - Keynote Speaker Introduction & Prize Presentation
Daniel Haber, PhD
Director
Mass General Cancer Center
4:30pm - Prize Recipient/Keynote Speaker
Keynote Address: "Neuron-glial interactions in health and disease: from cognition to cancer"
Michelle Monje, MD, PhD
Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences
Stanford University
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Bio: Michelle Monje, MD, PhD, is a professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. She received her MD and PhD in Neuroscience from Stanford and completed her residency training in Neurology at the Mass General Brigham, and then returned to Stanford for a clinical fellowship in Pediatric Neuro-Oncology. Dr. Monje has led several of her discoveries from basic molecular work to clinical trials. Her work has been recognized with numerous honors, including an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, election to the National Academy of Medicine and the 2023 Richard Lounsbery Award from the National Academy of Sciences.
2023 Prize Recipient
Michelle Monje, MD, PhD
Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences
Stanford University
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Biography
Michelle Monje, MD, PhD, is a professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. She received her MD and PhD in Neuroscience from Stanford and completed her residency training in Neurology at the Mass General Brigham, and then returned to Stanford for a clinical fellowship in Pediatric Neuro-Oncology. Dr. Monje has led several of her discoveries from basic molecular work to clinical trials. Her work has been recognized with numerous honors, including an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, election to the National Academy of Medicine and the 2023 Richard Lounsbery Award from the National Academy of Sciences.
Monje Research Summary
Dr. Monje’s research program focuses at the intersection of Neuroscience, Immunology and Brain Cancer Biology with an emphasis on neuron-glial interactions in health and oncological disease. Her laboratory studies how neuronal activity regulates healthy glial precursor cell proliferation, new oligodendrocyte generation, and adaptive myelination; this plasticity of myelin contributes to healthy cognitive function, while disruption of myelin plasticity contributes to cognitive impairment in disease states like cancer therapy-related cognitive impairment. Her lab discovered that neuronal activity similarly promotes the progression of malignant gliomas, driving glioma growth through both paracrine factors and through electrophysiologically functional neuron-to-glioma synapses.
Monje Research Image
Past Events
2021 Jonathan Kraft Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research
Thursday, November 4, 2021 | Download Event Flyer
The 2021 Kraft Award was presented to Aviv Regev, PhD, Head of Genentech Research and Early Development, for her groundbreaking work in cancer heterogeneity and single cell genomics.
2019 Jonathan Kraft Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research
Thursday, May 2, 2019 | Download Event Flyer
The 2019 Kraft Award was presented to Carl June, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania, for his outstanding work in CAR T cell therapy for cancer.
2018 Jonathan Kraft Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research
Thursday, May 3, 2018 | Download Event Flyer
The 2018 Kraft Award was presented to Charles Swanton, MD, PhD, of the Frances Crick Institute and Cancer Research-UK, for his outstanding work that has led to insight into genomic diversity within cancers and molecular mechanisms driving cancer evolution.
2017 Jonathan Kraft Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research
Wednesday, May 3, 2017 | Download Event Flyer
The 2017 Kraft Award was presented to Dr. Kevan M. Shokat, of UCSF, for his outstanding work in pioneering a technique to identify the substrates of individual kinases, and for developing a method to precisely control a particular kinase’s activity using small-molecule inhibitors.
2016 Jonathan Kraft Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research
Thursday, May 26, 2016 | Download Event Flyer
The 2016 Kraft Award was presented to Dr. Joan A. Steitz, of Yale University, for her outstanding contributions to the field of non-coding RNA-protein complexes and their emerging role in abnormal development and cancer.
Previous Award Recipients
Jonathan Kraft Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research
Presented by Mass General Cancer Center
2021
Aviv Regev, PhD
Head, Genentech Research and Early Development
Core member (on leave), Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Professor of Biology (on leave), MIT
2019
Carl June, MD
Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy
Director, Center for Cellular Immunotherapies
Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
2018
Charles Swanton, MD, PhD
Royal Society Napier Chair in Oncology
The Francis Crick Institute
Chair, Personalized Cancer Medicine, UCL Hospitals
Cancer Research-UK Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence
2017
Kevan M. Shokat, PhD
Professor, Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology
University of California San Francisco
2016
Joan A. Steitz, PhD
Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry
Yale School of Medicine
2015
C. David Allis, MD, PhD
Joy and Jack Fishman Professor
Laboratory of Chromatin Biology and Epigenetics, Rockefeller University
The Annual MGH Award In Cancer Research
In memory of Nathan and Grace Shiff
2014
Hans Clevers, MD, PhD
President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Professor of Molecular Genetics, University Utrecht, Netherlands
2013
James Allison, PhD
Chair, Department of Immunology
MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
2012
Craig Thompson, MD
President and Chief Executive Officer
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York
2011
Michael Stratton, MD, FRS
Director, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
2010
Charles Sawyers, MD
Chairman of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York
2009
Bert Vogelstein, MD
Director of the Ludwig Center for Cancer Genetics & Therapeutics
Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center
Johns Hopkins University, Maryland
2008
Titia de Lange, PhD
Associate Director of the Anderson Cancer Center
Rockefeller University, New York
2007
Joan Massague, PhD
Chairman of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York
2006
Anton Berns, PhD
Director of Research and Chairman of the Board of Directors,
Netherlands Cancer Institute and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital, The Netherlands
Kraft Prize Virtual Symposium
Jonathan Kraft Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research Presented by the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. November 4, 2021 | 1:00 – 5:00pm