3rd Annual Boston
Breast Cancer Symposium

Living Better and Longer
Through Innovations in Breast Cancer

Friday, April 12, 2019
8:30 am – 1:30 pm

Starr Center at Massachusetts General Hospital
185 Cambridge Street, 2nd Floor
Boston, MA 02114

The breast cancer landscape is rapidly evolving. Through advances in research and treatment, many breast cancer patients are living better and longer lives. Attend this year’s Breast Cancer Symposium in Boston and hear from leading experts in the field of breast cancer and metastatic breast cancer as they discuss recent breakthroughs that are changing how people are screened, diagnosed, and treated.

There will be a break with coffee and light refreshments served.

Schedule

8:30 am
Registration Opens

8:45 am – 1 pm
Program

Speakers

Regina Barzilay, Ph.D. (Keynote)

Using Artificial Intelligence to Improve Early Breast Cancer Detection

Regina Barzilay is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research interests are in natural language processing. Currently, Prof. Barzilay is focused on bringing the power of machine learning to oncology. In collaboration with physicians and her students, she is devising deep learning models that utilize imaging, free text, and structured data to identify trends that affect early diagnosis, treatment, and disease prevention. Prof. Barzilay is poised to play a leading role in creating new models that advance the capacity of computers to harness the power of human language data.

Regina Barzilay is a recipient of various awards including an NSF Career Award, the MIT Technology Review TR-35 Award, Microsoft Faculty Fellowship and several Best Paper Awards in top NLP conferences. In 2017, she received a MacArthur fellowship, an ACL fellowship and an AAAI fellowship.

Prof. Barzilay received her MS and BS from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Regina Barzilay received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Columbia University and spent a year as a postdoc at Cornell University.

Aditya Bardia, MBBS, MPH

Positive in the negative: Targeting Triple Negative Breast Cancer With Antibody Drug Conjugates

Dr. Aditya Bardia, a board-certified medical oncologist, is an Attending Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston. As the founding director of Molecular And Precision medicine (MAP) metastatic breast cancer clinic, Dr. Bardia is interested in integrating precision diagnostics and therapeutics, including clinical application of circulating tumor cells and DNA as “liquid biopsy”, to improve the outcomes of patients with breast cancer. Dr. Bardia has led the clinical development of antibody drug conjugate (ADC), sacituzumab govitecan, and selective estrogen receptor degrader (SERD), elacestrant, in metastatic breast cancer.

Dr. Bardia has received several research awards including outstanding award for research excellence at Mayo Clinic, Young Investigator Award from ASCO, and Douglas Family Foundation prize for excellence in oncology research at MGH. Dr. Bardia is the editor of precision medicine clinic section of The Oncologist, co-leader of the Molecular and Precision (MAP) tumor board at MGH, and editorial board member of ASCO molecular oncology tumor board.

Jennifer A. Shin, MD

Helping Patients Live Well with Breast Cancer

Dr. Jennifer Shin is a palliative medicine physician and the co-director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Palliative Care Outpatient Clinic.  She is also a medical oncologist, specializing in the care of patients with breast cancer.   She received her undergraduate education at Stanford University and her medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania.  She completed her internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and then went on to participate in fellowships in hematology-oncology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and in palliative medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

Dr. Shin’s specific clinical and research interests include quality of life in patients with breast cancer and patient-physician communication.   She enjoys teaching and is involved in coaching residents, mentoring palliative care fellows, and sits on a national committee focused on continuing medical education.  She is a Continuum Project Palliative Care Scholar at MGH and helps facilitate serious illness conversation workshops.   As a practicing palliative care physician and oncologist, she finds great joy in working with and learning from her patients and colleagues.  She is inspired by her patients who allow her to accompany them on their journey towards finding a renewed sense of meaning and hope.

Barbara L. Smith, MD, PhD

Advances in Surgery for Breast Cancer: Nipple Sparing Mastectomy and Image-Guided Surgery

Barbara L. Smith, MD, PhD is the Director of the Breast Program at Massachusetts General Hospital and a member of the Division of Surgical Oncology at MGH. She is a Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Smith received her undergraduate training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an MD from Harvard Medical School’s Harvard/MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and a PhD in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Smith’s research activities have focused on reducing the extent of surgery and radiation required to treat breast cancer, improved approaches for lumpectomy margin assessment, and 3-dimensional breast anatomy as it relates to breast surgery and pathologic analysis of specimens, including nipple sparing mastectomies. She has developed a novel technique for an oncologically safe and cosmetically superior nipple sparing mastectomy. She is the PI of 2 NIH-funded multicenter trials of the Lumicell Imaging System in breast cancer lumpectomy margin assessment.

Dr. Smith is Chair of the Society of Surgical Oncology Breast Program Directors Committee and Co-Director of the Breast Surgery Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Laura M. Spring, MD

The Neoadjuvant Therapy Model in Breast Cancer

Dr. Spring is a clinical/translational investigator and breast medical oncologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School. She completed her internship and residency in internal medicine at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and her fellowship training in medical oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. The primary focus of Dr. Spring’s research is to develop novel therapeutic and biomarker strategies to improve the care of breast cancer patients.

Dr. Spring is particularly interested in blood-based monitoring of localized breast cancer and the use of targeted therapies and immunotherapy in the neoadjuvant setting. She is involved with the design and conduct of several breast cancer clinical trials for localized and metastatic breast cancer.

Sara Tolaney, MD, MPH

Sara Tolaney, MD, MPH, is the Associate Director for the Susan F. Smith Center for Women’s Cancers, the Director for Clinical Trials in the Breast Oncology Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Senior Physician, Director of Breast Immunotherapy, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on the development of novel therapies in the treatment of breast cancer.

Dr. Tolaney is Principal Investigator (PI) of many therapeutic clinical trials and translational studies for breast cancer. Dr. Tolaney serves as the Breast Cancer Leader for the Early Drug Development Center (EDDC) and the for Center for Immuno-Oncology (CIO) at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She has developed many novel immunotherapy combination trials, many of which are currently ongoing. She currently serves on the Scientific Review Committee at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and is a member of the ASCO Breast Track Scientific Review Committee. She is the recipient of the Lee M. Nadler “Extra Mile” Award, and the Innovation Award for Clinical Faculty.

Dr. Tolaney received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University and her medical degree from UC San Francisco. She subsequently completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, and fellowships in hematology and medical oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She obtained her Masters in Public Health from Harvard School of Public Health.

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