Progress, Potential, and Possibilities Podcast / Show

Send us a textDr. Jana Dickter, MD (https://www.cityofhope.org/jana-dickter) is associate clinical professor in the department of medicine, division of infectious diseases, at City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is board-certified in internal medicine, infectious diseases, and the American Academy of HIV Medicine. Dr. Dickter earned her undergraduate degree in cognitive sciences from the University of California, San Diego. She went on to receive her medical doctorate from Rush Medical College in Chicago. After an internal medicine residency at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Dr. Dickter began her fellowship at UCLA’s Affiliated Program in Infectious Diseases. In her clinical work, she has focused on the management of infections in the immunosuppressed. At City of Hope, she is an on-site HIV specialist and has an interest treating people who are living with HIV and cancer. She was the principal investigator involved in presenting the case of The City of Hope patient: prolonged HIV-1 remission without antiretrovirals after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation of CCR5-delta-32 mutation donor cells for acute myelogenous leukemia. She also serves as the HIV physician for the first-in-human trial to evaluate the feasibility, safety and engraftment of zinc finger nuclease genome edited CCR5 modified CD34+ hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells in HIV-1 infected patients. Additionally, Dr. Dickter has been involved in clinical trials for evaluating certain medications for difficult-to treat infections in immunosuppressed patients. She is also involved in antimicrobial stewardship, infection control, and has published papers on aspects of patient management with antimicrobial agents. These papers have dealt with nosocomial infections, cost assessment of antimicrobial use, and unusual case reports, all intended to teach practitioners who manage these difficult to treat patients. Support the show

Send us a textDr. Asha M. George, DrPH (https://biodefensecommission.org/teams/asha-m-george-drph/) is Executive Director, Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, which was established in 2014 to assess gaps in and provide recommendations to improve U.S. biodefense. The Panel determines where the United States is falling short of addressing biological attacks and emerging and reemerging infectious diseases. Dr. George is a public health security professional whose research and programmatic emphasis has been practical, academic, and political. She served in the U.S. House of Representatives as a senior professional staffer and subcommittee staff director at the House Committee on Homeland Security in the 110th and 111th Congress. She has worked for a variety of organizations, including government contractors, foundations, and non-profits. As a contractor, she supported and worked with all Federal Departments, especially the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. George also served on active duty in the U.S. Army as a military intelligence officer and as a paratrooper and she is a decorated Desert Storm Veteran. Dr. George holds a Bachelor of Arts in Natural Sciences from Johns Hopkins University, a Master of Science in Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (in Parasitology and Laboratory Practice), and a Doctorate in Public Health (with a focus on Public Health Policy and Security Preparedness) from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She is also a graduate of the Harvard University National Preparedness Leadership Initiative.Support the show

Send us a textDr. Cecilia A. Conrad, Ph.D. (https://www.macfound.org/about/people/cecilia-a-conrad) is CEO of Lever for Change, a nonprofit affiliate of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (where she also serves as a Senior Advisor) which leverages investments in solutions to the world’s biggest problems — from racial and gender equity to climate change. Dr. Conrad was formerly a Managing Director at the Foundation, where she led the MacArthur Fellows program and steered the cross-Foundation team that created MacArthur’s 100&Change—an athematic, open call competition that periodically makes a single $100 million grant to help solve a critical problem of our time. She continues to manage the 100&Change competition. Before joining the Foundation in January 2013, Dr. Conrad had a distinguished career as both a professor and an administrator at Pomona College in Claremont, CA. She held the Stedman Sumner Chair in Economics and is currently a Professor of Economics, Emerita. She served as Associate Dean of the College (2004-2007), as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College (2009-2012), and as Acting President (Fall 2012). From 2007-2009, she was interim Vice President and Dean of the Faculty at Scripps College. As Associate Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Pomona, Dr. Conrad championed the College's summer undergraduate research program and expanded it to the arts and humanities, led conversations regarding the value and assessment of a liberal arts college education, nurtured collaborations between the arts and the sciences, and worked with academic departments to improve the campus climate for diversity. As a member of the faculty, Dr. Conrad contributed to the curriculum of several interdisciplinary programs and, in 2002, was recognized as California's Carnegie Professor of the Year, a prestigious national award that recognizes faculty members for their achievement as undergraduate professors. Dr. Conrad's academic research focuses on the effects of race and gender on economic status. Her work has appeared in both academic journals and nonacademic publications including The American Prospect and Black Enterprise. Before joining the faculty at Pomona College, Dr. Conrad served on the faculties of Barnard College and Duke University. She was also an economist at the Federal Trade Commission and a visiting scholar at The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Dr. Conrad is a member of the board of trustees of Bryn Mawr College, The Poetry Foundation, the National Academy of Social Insurance, IES Study Abroad, and the African Center for Economic Transformation. She is a member of the TIAA Board of Governors and of the 2021-2023 Generosity Commission. Dr. Conrad received the National Urban League’s Women of Power Award in 2008 and the National Economic Association’s Samuel Z. Westerfield award in 2018. She has honorary doctorates from Claremont Graduate University and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Dr. Conrad received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Wellesley College and her Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University. Support the show

Send us a textAmbassador John E. Lange (https://unfoundation.org/who-we-are/our-people/john-e-lange/) is Senior Fellow, Global Health Diplomacy, at the United Nations Foundation, a charitable organization headquartered in Washington, DC, that supports the United Nations and its activities. Ambassador Lange has extensive leadership experience in global health issues and longstanding involvement in United Nations affairs, focusing on issues related to global health security and the work of the World Health Organization. He also serves as the Chair of the Leadership Team of the Measles & Rubella Initiative. Ambassador Lange worked from 2009-2013 at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he engaged in high-level advocacy with governments and international organizations to advance the Gates Foundation’s global health and development goals in Africa. In 2012, he was the founding Co-Chair of the Polio Partners Group, the broad group of stakeholders in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, and served in that role for a four-year term. Ambassador Lange had a distinguished 28-year career in the Foreign Service at the U.S. Department of State, where he was a pioneer in the field of global health diplomacy and a leader in pandemic preparedness and response. He served as the Special Representative on Avian and Pandemic Influenza (2006-2009); Deputy Inspector General; Deputy U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator at the inception of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief; and Associate Dean for Leadership and Management at the Foreign Service Institute, where he directed the Senior Seminar, the federal government’s highest-level civilian/military joint training program. He was the U.S. Ambassador to Botswana and Special Representative to the Southern African Development Community (1999-2002), where he oversaw operations of seven U.S. Government agencies and made HIV/AIDS his signature issue. Ambassador Lange headed the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as Charge d'Affaires during the August 7, 1998, Al-Qaeda bombing, for which he received the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award for "skilled leadership" and "extraordinary courage." From 1991 to 1995, while at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Ambassador Lange managed U.S. humanitarian and refugee assistance channeled through international organizations. He also had tours of duty in the State Department Bureaus of African Affairs, Western Hemisphere Affairs and Management in Washington and at U.S. Embassies in Lomé, Togo; Paris, France; and Mexico City, Mexico. Prior to joining the diplomatic service in 1981, he worked for five years at the United Nations Association of the USA in New York. Ambassador Lange is the author of a case study in the book, Negotiating and Navigating Global Health: Case Studies in Global Health Diplomacy (2012), that describes the international negotiations on sharing of pandemic influenza viruses and access to vaccines when he led the U.S. delegation. He has delivered lectures on pandemics and other global health issues at Chatham House, London; the Council on Foreign Relations, New York; and numerous other venues. He has written numerous journal and magazine articles and blogs on the Dar es Salaam Embassy bombing, leadership in a crisis, humanitarian assistance, pandemic preparedness and response, and other global health issues. Support the show

Send us a textDr. Ana Maria Cuervo, M.D., Ph.D. (https://www.einsteinmed.edu/faculty/8784/ana-maria-cuervo/) is Co-Director of the Einstein Institute for Aging Research, and a member of the Einstein Liver Research Center and Cancer Center. She serves as a Professor in the Department of Developmental & Molecular Biology, and the Department of Medicine (Hepatology), and has the Robert and Renée Belfer Chair for the Study of Neurodegenerative Diseases. Dr. Cuervo studied medicine and pursued a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Valencia, as well as post-doctoral work at Tufts, and in 2001 she started her laboratory at Einstein, where she studies the role of protein-degradation in aging and age-related disorders, with emphasis in neurodegeneration and metabolic disorders. Dr. Cuervo’s group is interested in understanding how altered proteins can be eliminated from cells and their components recycled. Her group has linked alterations in lysosomal protein degradation (autophagy) with different neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease. They have also proven that restoration of normal lysosomal function prevents accumulation of damaged proteins with age, demonstrating this way that removal of these toxic products is possible. Her lab has also pioneered studies demonstrating a tight link between autophagy and cellular metabolism. They described how autophagy coordinates glucose and lipid metabolism and how failure of different autophagic pathways with age contribute to important metabolic disorders such as diabetes or obesity. Dr. Cuervo is considered a leader in the field of protein degradation in relation to biology of aging and has been invited to present her work in numerous national and international institutions, including name lectures as the Robert R. Konh Memorial Lecture, the NIH Director’s, the Roy Walford, the Feodor Lynen, the Margaret Pittman, the IUBMB Award, the David H. Murdock, the Gerry Aurbach, the SEBBM L’Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science, the C. Ronald Kahn Distinguished Lecture and the Harvey Society Lecture. She has organized and chaired international conferences on protein degradation and on aging, belongs to the editorial board of scientific journals in this topic, and is currently co-editor-in-chief of Aging Cell. Dr. Cuervo has served in NIH advisory panels, special emphasis panels, and study sections, the NIA Scientific Council and the NIH Council of Councils and has been recently elected member of the NIA Board of Scientific Counselors and member of the of the Advisory Committee to the NIH Deputy Director. She has received numerous awards for the pioneering work of her team such as the 2005 P. Benson Award in Cell Biology, the 2005/8 Keith Porter Fellow in Cell Biology, the 2006 Nathan Shock Memorial Lecture Award, the 2008 Vincent Cristofalo Rising Start in Aging Award, the 2010 Bennett J. Cohen Award in Aging Biology, the 2012 Marshall S. Horwitz, MD Faculty Prize for Research Excellence and the 2015 Saul Korey Prize in Translational Medicine Science. She has also received twice the LaDonne Schulman Teaching Award. In 2015 she was elected International Academic of the Royal Academy of Medicine of the Valencia Community and in 2017, she was elected member of the Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicas y Naturales. She was elected member of the AmeriSupport the show

Send us a textDr. Katherine High, MD, is President, Therapeutics, at Asklepios BioPharmaceutical (AskBio - https://www.askbio.com/), where she is also member of the AskBio Board of Directors, and has responsibility for driving the strategic direction and execution of pre-clinical and clinical programs of the company. AskBio is a wholly owned and independently operated subsidiary of Bayer AG, set up as a fully integrated gene therapy company dedicated to developing life-saving medicines that cure genetic diseases. Most recently, Dr. High was a Visiting Professor at Rockefeller University and previous to that, she served as President, Head of Research and Development, and a member of the Board of Directors at Spark Therapeutics (a subsidiary of Hoffmann-La Roche), where she directed the development and regulatory approval of Luxturna® (a gene therapy medication for the treatment of the ophthalmic condition Leber congenital amaurosis), and represents the first gene therapy for genetic disease to obtain regulatory approval in both the United States and Europe. Dr. High was a longtime member of the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and medical staff at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she was also an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She served a five-year term on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Advisory Committee on Cell, Tissue and Gene Therapies and is a past president of the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy. Dr. High received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Harvard University, an MD from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, a hematology fellowship at Yale University, a business certification from the University of North Carolina Business School’s Management Institute for Hospital Administrators and a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians (London).Support the show

Send us a textDr. Bruce Levine, Ph.D. (https://www.med.upenn.edu/apps/faculty/index.php/g5455356/p3504) is the Barbara and Edward Netter Professor in Cancer Gene Therapy, and the Founding Director of the Clinical Cell and Vaccine Production Facility (CVPF) in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the Abramson Cancer Center, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Levine received a B.A. (Biology) from University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in Immunology and Infectious Diseases from Johns Hopkins, and is responsible for a range of important therapeutic “Firsts” including First-in-human adoptive immunotherapy trials that included the first use of a lentiviral vector, the first infusions of gene edited cells, and the first use of lentivirally-modified cells to treat cancer. Dr. Levine is co-inventor of the first FDA approved gene therapy (Kymriah), chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T cells) for leukemia and lymphoma, licensed to Novartis. Dr. Levine is co-inventor on 30 issued U.S. patents and co-author of over 200 manuscripts and book chapters with a Google Scholar citation h-index of 99. He is a Co-Founder of Tmunity Therapeutics (https://www.tmunity.com/), and of Capstan Therapeutics, both spin outs of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Levine is a recipient of the William Osler Patient Oriented Research Award, the Wallace H. Coulter Award for Healthcare Innovation, the National Marrow Donor Program/Be The Match ONE Forum 2020 Dennis Confer Innovate Award, serves as Immediate Past-President of the International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine. He has written for Scientific American and Wired and has been interviewed by the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR, Time Magazine, National Geographic, Bloomberg, Forbes, BBC, and other international media outlets. The Tribeca Film Festival is currently debuting a documentary, Of Medicine And Miracles, tracing the transformative work in personalized cancer therapy, of Dr. Levine and his team - https://tribecafilm.com/films/of-medicine-and-miracles-2022Support the show

Send us a textDr. Srinivas Rao, MD, Ph.D. is the Chief Scientific Officer at atai Life Sciences (https://www.atai.life/), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company aiming to transform the treatment of mental health disorders. With offices in New York, London and Berlin, atai's business model combines funding, technology, scientific and regulatory expertise with a focus on psychedelic therapeutic moieties, and other drugs, with differentiated safety profiles and therapeutic potential. Dr. Rao also serves as CEO of atai portfolio company, EntheogeniX (https://www.entheogenixbio.com/), a computational biophysics and artificial intelligence biotech working to design the next generation of psychedelics-inspired mental health drugs. Dr. Rao has over 19 years of professional experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Prior to atai, Dr. Rao has held the titles of Chief Scientific, Medical, or Executive Officer at companies ranging from venture-backed startups to vertically-integrated, publicly-traded pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Rao completed an internship in Internal Medicine at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He received his Ph.D. in neurobiology from Yale Graduate School and his M.D. from Yale School of Medicine. He holds both a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Yale College and Yale Graduate School, respectively.Support the show

Send us a textThe Honorable Secretary Dr. Donna Shalala, Ph.D. (https://people.miami.edu/profile/dshalala@miami.edu), currently serves as Professor Emerita, Department of Health Management and Policy, University of Miami, where she previously served as President from 2001 to 2015, where during her tenure as President, she advanced the university into the top tier of U.S. research universities. With more than 40 years as an accomplished scholar, teacher, and administrator, Secretary Shalala personifies outstanding leadership and dedication to public service. Secretary Shalala received her A.B. degree from Western College for Women and Ph.D. degree from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. In addition to her leadership of University of Miami, Secretary Shalala served as President of Hunter College from 1980 to 1987 and as Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1987 to 1993. Secretary Shalala was assistant secretary for policy development and research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Carter administration. In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed her U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), where she served for all eight years of the Clinton administration, becoming the nation's longest serving HHS secretary. During this time she fought to create, implement and oversee the Children’s Healthcare Insurance Program, currently covering over 7.6 million children throughout the country, as well as doubling the budget of the National Institute of Health (NIH) and securing the highest immunization rates in American history. Secretary Shalala was appointed by President George W. Bush to co-chair with Senator Bob Dole the Commission on Care for Returning Wounded Warriors, and in 2008 received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. In 2009, she was appointed chair of the Committee on the Future of Nursing at the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Most recently, in addition to serving in the U.S. Congress for Florida's 27th congressional district, in the U.S. House of Representatives, Secretary Shalala served as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force on The Emerging Global Health Crisis, as well as a Commissioner of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense. One of the most honored academics of her generation, Secretary Shalala has been elected to seven national academies including: National Academy of Education; the National Academy of Public Administration; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the American Philosophical Society; the National Academy of Social Insurance; the American Academy of Political and Social Science; and the National Academy of Medicine.Support the show

Send us a textKeith Camhi is Managing Director, Techstars Future of Longevity Accelerator (https://www.techstars.com/accelerators/longevity), a program, run in partnership with Pivotal Ventures (https://www.pivotalventures.org/), an investment and incubation company created by Melinda French Gates, focusing on innovative solutions to address the unmet needs of older adults and their caregivers. The longevity accelerator core program themes include: Caregiver Support, Care Coordination, Aging in Place, Financial Wellness and Resilience, Preventive Health (both Physical and Cognitive), and Social Engagement. Keith was previously the SVP of Accelerators for Techstars globally and was inspired to move to the MD role for the longevity program based on having built a venture-backed startup serving older adults himself, having experienced the gaps in America’s care giving infrastructure firsthand, and wanting to support entrepreneurs who are building solutions to address this substantial market opportunity. Techstars is a global investment business that provides access to capital, one-on-one mentorship, a worldwide network and customized programming for early-stage entrepreneurs. It was founded in 2006 in Boulder, Colorado. As of May 2022, the company had accepted over 2,900 companies into its accelerator programs with a combined market capitalization of US$71 billion. Prior to Techstars, Keith founded and led the rapid growth of two tech companies in the health and fitness industry – one that reached #20 on the Deloitte Fast 500, and another that made Entrepreneur’s Franchise 500 three times. He has raised over $50 million in venture funding, holds several patents for sensor and machine vision technology, has been an angel investor and LP in several venture funds, and enjoys mentoring promising startups. Keith received a BS in Computer Science from Cornell, and was an Leaders for Global Operations Fellow at MIT, where he received an MBA and an MS in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science.Support the show