Dr. Alan Sandler is a distinguished leader in oncology and drug development with extensive experience in both industry and academia. His expertise spans clinical development and operations, regulatory affairs, drug safety and development strategies. Dr. Sandler previously held the position of Executive Vice President, Chief Medical Officer at Mirati Therapeutics, a Bristol Myers Squibb company. Before joining Mirati, he was the President, Global Head of Development in Oncology at Zai Lab. Prior to that, Dr. Sandler held roles of progressive responsibility at Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, where he ultimately served as Senior Vice President and Global Head, Product Development of Oncology Solid Tumors. His academic positions include roles at Oregon Health and Science University, where he served as Professor of Medicine and Head of the Division of Hematology/Medical Oncology; Vanderbilt University as an Associate Professor of Medicine and Indiana University as Assistant Professor of Medicine. Dr. Sandler earned his M.D. from Rush Medical College and completed his training in internal medicine and a fellowship in medical oncology at Yale-New Haven Medical Center. An active contributor to the medical field, he has authored over 300 publications, including peer-reviewed articles, reviews, abstracts, and book chapters.

Francesco Hofmann is VP, Head R&D Pierre Fabre Medical Care, since May 2021.

Prior to joining Pierre Fabre, Francesco spent 23 years in the Disease Area Oncology at Novartis. During this time, he had leadership roles of increasing responsibility, always focused on the discovery and development of novel cancer therapeutics. Since 2005, Francesco has been a member of the Oncology Leadership Team, that oversees drug discovery, translational research, data science and early clinical development at Novartis. Ultimately, from 2017, he was Global Head Oncology Drug Discovery with direct responsibility for the whole Oncology pre-clinical portfolio and for the Oncology Discovery organization in Basel, Switzerland, and in Cambridge, MA, USA. Teams under his leadership have discovered and progressed into clinical development more than a dozen novel cancer therapeutics.

From 1993 to 1997, Francesco was Research Fellow in Medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA, where he performed experimental research to understand the underlying molecular mechanism driving the uncontrolled proliferation of cancer cells.

Prior to joining Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Francesco was at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, Switzerland, where he earned a PhD in 1993 and a Master in 1989 in Biochemistry.

Professor Sanjay Popat is a Consultant Thoracic Medical Oncologist at the Royal Marsden Hospital and Professor of Thoracic Oncology at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, UK.

His research interests include the development of novel drug strategies for the treatment of thoracic cancers through clinical trials, the identification of DNA variants that influence thoracic cancer development and their impact on clinical behavior, as well as the identification of biomarkers predictive of therapeutic effect.

He is co-director for the NIHR London South Clinical Research Network (CRN) Cancer Division and Chair of Cancer for the West London Genomic Medicine Centre. He Chairs the British Thoracic Oncology Group (BTOG) and is the immediate past Chair of the UK NCRI Lung Cancer Clinical Studies Group (CSG) Advanced Disease Sub-group. He is active in the European Thoracic Oncology Platform (ETOP) and the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) Lung Group.

Professor Josep Tabernero holds MD and PhD degrees from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, and he is currently Head of the Medical Oncology Department at the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, Director of the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) and Professor of Medicine at UVic-UCC. He has been Principal Investigator of several Phase I pharmacodynamic studies and translational projects with tumor-directed targeted therapies and immune-based therapies.

His research aims at potentiating molecular therapies targeting specific oncoproteins and accelerating more effective personalized cancer medicines for patients displaying genetic lesions or pathway dysregulation.

Dr. Tabernero serves on the Editorial Boards of various top-tier journals, including Annals of Oncology, ESMO Open, Cancer Discovery, Clinical Cancer Research, Cancer Treatment Reviews, and Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology. He has (co-)authored approximately 500 peer-reviewed papers with an H-Index of 95.

He was the President (2018 – 2019) of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO). He is also a member of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). He has also been a member of the Educational and Scientific Committees of ESMO, ASCO, AACR, AACR, AACR/NCI/EORTC, ASCO Gastrointestinal, TAT, and ESMO-GI/WCGIC meetings.

Professor Timothy Yap is a Medical Oncologist and Physician-Scientist based at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is a Professor in the Department for Investigational Cancer Therapeutics (Phase I Program), and the Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology. Professor Yap is Vice President and Head of Clinical Development in the Therapeutics Discovery Division, a drug discovery biopharmaceutical division where drug discovery and clinical translation are seamlessly integrated. He is also the Associate Director of Translational Research in the Khalifa Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy, which is an integrated research and clinical trials program aimed at implementing personalized cancer therapy and improving patient outcomes. Professor Yap’s main research focuses on the first-in-human and combinatorial development of molecularly targeted agents and immunotherapies, and their acceleration through clinical studies using novel predictive and pharmacodynamic biomarkers.