Kraft Prize Symposium

Daniel A. Haber, MD, PhD

Dr. David T. Ting is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Mass General Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research and Harvard Medical School. He is a physician scientist, cancer biologist, and bioengineer, and is currently Associate Clinical Director for Innovation at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. Dr. Ting’s laboratory works on understanding RNA expression patterns in cancer to gain biological insight into the role of tumor heterogeneity in cancer progression, develop biomarkers applicable to the clinic, and to identify novel therapeutic avenues against cancer. His group uses single cell analytics to understand the relationship of cancer microenvironment and tumor cell plasticity. These single cell technologies have been applied to circulating tumor cells (CTCs) that have been isolated with microfluidic enrichment technologies to understand the molecular underpinnings of cancer metastasis and provide a path for blood based biomarkers. From these studies, his group has discovered the important role of aberrant expression of non-coding repeat RNAs in cancers that affect cellular plasticity, shaping the tumor microenvironment, and metastatic dissemination.

Dr. Ting received his BS in chemical engineering and biology from MIT, MD from Harvard Medical School, and medical oncology training at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He has founded three biotech companies based on the research in his lab including ROME Therapeutics, PanTher Therapeutics, and TellBio, Inc.

Dr. Karen Adelman is the Edward S. Harkness Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. She is also a Member of the Gene Regulation Observatory at the Broad Institute, and the Ludwig Cancer Center at Harvard Medical School. The Adelman lab pioneered genomic studies of RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) transcription, revealing that pausing of RNAPII in early elongation is a central regulatory step in metazoan gene expression. Ongoing work probes the interplay between transcription, RNA processing and epigenetic machineries to elucidate the determinants of mature mRNA formation in health and disease.

Dr. Aaron Hata is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research at the Mass General Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Hata received his MD and PhD degrees from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and completed an Internal Medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a Medical Oncology fellowship at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Hata’s research focuses on understanding mechanisms of drug sensitivity and resistance to targeted therapies for lung cancer. His group has discovered mechanisms of clinical acquired drug resistance in oncogene-driven lung cancers, and he has played an instrumental role in the development of novel therapeutic approaches for overcoming drug resistance. Work by Dr. Hata’s group has also led to fundamental insights into the mechanisms that enable tumor cells to survive and evolve during therapy.

Dr. Mo Motamedi is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and the James and Patricia Poitras Endowed Chair in Cancer Research at the Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research at the Mass General Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School. The research program in his laboratory is chiefly focused on understanding how changes to eukaryotic chromatin are made, maintained, and propagated, and how these changes establish alternative cellular states particularly in response to persistent stress. As a fellow, his work on fission yeast centromeres helped establish the Nascent Transcript Model, according to which non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) tethered to chromatin provide a platform for the assembly of RNA processing and chromatin-regulatory complexes. One focus of the lab is understanding the core mechanisms by which eukaryotic cells nucleate and establish heterochromatin using the fission yeast as a model organism. His lab is also interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms by which cancer cells adopt phenotypic plasticity to develop resistance to treatment epigenetically.

Dr. Miguel Rivera is an Associate Professor of Pathology at the Mass General Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research and Harvard Medical School. He is also an attending physician in the Center for Integrated Diagnostics at MGH and an Institute Member at the Broad Institute. Dr. Rivera’s laboratory studies abnormal gene regulation in cancer, with a focus on how ‘driver’ oncogenes reprogram gene expression in cancer cells. These studies use a combination of genome-wide chromatin profiling, genome editing and biochemical assays and have led to several insights into mechanisms of chromatin regulation utilized by oncogenic transcription factors in a variety of tumor types. Dr. Rivera’s research has been recognized by several awards including the Thomas F. and Diana L. Ryan Research Scholar Award and the Martin Prize for fundamental research.

Dr. David Pellman is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a Professor of Cell Biology and Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, the Margaret M. Dyson Professor of Pediatric Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Associate Director for Basic Science at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. He received undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Chicago and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Whitehead Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Pellman’s laboratory has made contributions to understanding cell division and how cell division errors drive rapid evolution of the genome. His group’s accomplishments include: (1) the discovery of formin-dependent actin assembly and a mechanism for positioning mitotic spindles within asymmetrically dividing cells; (2) discoveries showing that whole genome duplication can promote evolutionary adaptation and tumor development; 3) the discovery of a mechanism explaining chromothripsis, a catastrophic mutational process in cancer and congenital disease.

Daniel A. Haber, MD, PhD

Howard Y. Chang MD, PhD is the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Research and Director of the RNA Medicine Program at Stanford University. He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator; he is also Professor of Dermatology and of Genetics at Stanford University School of Medicine. Chang earned a Ph.D. in Biology from MIT, M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and completed Dermatology residency and postdoctoral training at Stanford University. Dr. Chang is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, and American Academy for the Arts and Sciences. Dr. Chang’s honors include the King Faisal Prize for Science, Korsmeyer Award from the American Society for Clinical Investigation, NAS Award for Molecular Biology, Outstanding Investigator Award of the National Cancer Institute, Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research, Judson Daland Prize of the American Philosophical Society, and the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise. His work was honored by the journal Cell as a Landmark paper over the last 40 years and by Science as “Insight of the decade”.

2023 Jonathan Kraft Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research

Tuesday, May 2, 2023 | Download Event Flyer

The 2023 Kraft Award was presented to Michelle, Monje, MD, PhD of Stanford University for her groundbreaking work in Neuro-Oncology.

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.