
Dongfeng Tan
Professor
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
USA
Biography
After graduating from Tongji Medical University in Wuhan in 1983, Dr. Tan became a graduate student and studied liver pathology. Then he went to Essen University in Germany, sponsored by the Volkswagen scholarship, to study mesothelioma (1987-1990). After that, he participated in the Human Genome Project at Columbia University in New York (1990-1994). Subsequently, Dr. Tan was a resident and then a chief resident at Yale University Medical Center (1994-1998). He continued as an oncologic pathology fellow at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York (1998-1999). Dr. Tan was certified in AP and CP in 1998. He became an assistant professor at Roswell Park Cancer Center in Buffalo (1999-2004). He then worked as an associate professor at the University of Texas Health Center in Houston for two years before I joined MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2006. Dr. Tan was promoted to professor at MD Anderson in 2010, and became the first physician with Asia-heritage holding joint appointments in two clinical disciplines at MD Anderson . Sixty percent of his time is devoted to clinical services, and the rest is committed to research, education, and extramural activities. Dr. Tan’s research is focused on solid tumors, investigating potential biomarkers to assess survivorship and guide personalized medicine. Two of his \English books, Principles of Molecular Diagnostics and Personalized Cancer Medicine and Advances of Surgical Pathology in Gastric Cancer, have been translated into Chinese. Dr. Tan has published 200 peer-reviewed scientific articles and book chapters. Jointly, Dr. Tan has held three patents. He has frequently been invited to present at national and international conferences and seminars. Additionally, he has been invited to chair and co-chair conferences and sections of congresses. Furthermore, Dr. Tan has mentored numerous residents, fellows, and junior pathologists. As the senior medical consultant of Kingmed Medicine, Dr. Tan introduced ASCP to China in 2014, and he has been the honored director of the ASCP Training Center there. He serves on the CAP Committee of Molecular Marketing Panel. Dr. Tan has also served on the editorial board of eight peer-reviewed journals.
Research Interest
Solid tumors, investigating potential biomarkers to assess survivorship and guide personalized medicine

Nachum Dafny
Professor
The University of Texas Health Science Center
USA
Biography
Dr. Dafny received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem in 1965 and 1969, respectively followed by post-docs at Caltech, UCLA, and Columbia. He is currently a professor of Neurobiology at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston. The main focus of his research is on two topics: pain mechanisms, including pain suppression and electro-acupuncture, and drug abuse mechanisms, involving morphine, cocaine, alcohol, ritalin, ecstasy, and Prozac. Behavioral, neurophysiological, pharmacological, endocrinological, and immunological procedures are used, primarily with the rodent as an animal model. The electrophysiological procedures used include single cell and evoked potential recording, electroencephalography (EEG), and brain stimulation. Computerized techniques are used for monitoring animal behavior. He is also involved with several other studies. These concern connections between the nervous, immune, and endocrine systems; brain regulation of hormonal secretion; mechanisms of obesity and satiety; and the electrophysiology of neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine, and of peptides, with clinical application to Parkinsonism, Huntington's chorea, and Tardive dyskinesia. In addition, collaborative immunological and endocrinologic studies are conducted with other groups in the Texas Medical Center. Dr. Dafny is a member of several professional organizations including the Society for Neuroscience, Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, the New York Academy of Sciences, American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, and the American Physiological Society, among others.
Research Interest
Pain suppression and electro-acupuncture, and drug abuse mechanisms
Biography
John received a BS in biochemistry from Albright College and his Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from Brown University. After completing a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute in NYC in the departments of Positron Emission Tomography and Neurology, he joined the Medicinal Chemistry Discovery group at Johnson Matthey Biomedical. There he worked on Pt-based antitumor drugs and peptide-based diagnostic radio-imaging agents. After nearly a decade in drug Discovery, he later moved on to drug development, in positions of increasing responsibility at J&J and Sanofi-Aventis. For the past 15 years he and his teams have specialized in drug delivery and pharmaceutics, focused at the interface of drug discovery and development. His specific expertise in drug delivery lies in the area of enhancing the solubility of insoluble compounds, where he has successfully introduced a wide range of methods into drug discovery space. His research also spans specific areas such as targeted prodrugs and new functional excipients. He currently is a Senior Principal Scientist and Network Technology Lead of the Discovery Pharmaceutical Sciences department at Merck Research Labs. He is co-inventor on 13 US Patents and author of many diverse publications and book chapters in the fields of organic, solid state & medicinal chemistry as well as drug delivery.
Research Interest
Organic, solid state & medicinal chemistry and drug delivery