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Scientific | Medical Advisors and Contributors
Professor Parry Guilford, MSc, PhD
Director, University of Otago, Center for Translational Cancer Research, Dunedin NZ
More about Professor Parry Guilford
Parry has been working on HDGC since 1995, when he teamed up with a New Zealand Māori family to try and uncover the cause of stomach cancer running through several Māori communities. Following the identification of CDH1’s role in 1998, his research group in the Cancer Genetics Laboratory, University of Otago, moved on to studying how CDH1 mutations lead to cancer. Over the last five years, the focus has shifted to the development of drugs which can be used to prevent and treat diffuse gastric cancer and lobular breast cancer in HDGC families.
Jeremy Davis MD
Surgical Oncologist and Clinical Investigator, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute (NCI), at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD
Dr. Jeremy Davis completed his surgery training at Indiana University and an additional three years of cancer research at the NCI. He received advanced training in surgical oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and is board certified in both Complex General Surgical Oncology and General Surgery.
He currently serves as Surgeon-in-Chief of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center, “America’s Research Hospital”. He is also Program Director for the NCI Surgical Oncology Research Fellowship.
Dr. Davis’ research focus is on sporadic and inherited forms of stomach cancer, specifically Hereditary Diffuse Gastric Cancer Syndrome, and the molecular underpinnings of gastric cancer development and metastasis. He is the principal investigator of four active stomach cancer studies being conducted at NIH. He leads the NIH Foregut Team, a multidisciplinary team of experts dedicated to the clinical care and research of patients with diseases of the upper gastrointestinal tract.
Johanna D'Addario, MHS, PA-C
Physician Assistant, Gynecologic Oncology, Yale-New Haven Health, New Haven CT
Johanna D’Addario is a CDH1 mutation carrier and breast cancer survivor living in Connecticut. She was diagnosed with a CDH1 mutation in 2008, had a preventative total gastrectomy in 2010 at the age of 26, and a bilateral mastectomy in 2015 at age 31. She is passionate about connecting with and supporting others who have had similar challenges in life. She works as a physician assistant in women’s oncology services and cares for women who are at high risk of gynecologic cancers. She tries to honor her father Greg, who died of Hereditary Diffuse Gastric Cancer in 2009, by living each day to its fullest.
Johanna lives with her husband Tom and their dog, Cooper, and enjoys traveling, exercise, the theater, and spending time with friends and family.
Sam S. Yoon MD
Attending Surgeon, Division of Gastric and Mixed Tumors, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York NY
Dr. Sam S. Yoon is an Attending Surgeon in the Division of Gastric and Mixed Tumors at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center treats more gastric cancer patients than any other institution in the United States. He graduated from Harvard University and received his M.D. from the University of California at San Diego. He completed his residency in general surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2001 and his fellowship in surgical oncology at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in 2003. He was an Associate Professor of Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School before joining the staff at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in 2012.
Dr. Yoon specializes in the treatment of patients with gastric cancer and has performed over 50 prophylactic total gastrectomies for individuals with a germline CDH1 mutation. He has been the principal investigator of several clinical trials examining novel treatment strategies and given numerous invited national and international lectures on gastric these cancers. Dr. Yoon’s main research interests are in tumor angiogenesis and cancer stem cells. He runs an NIH/NCI-funded research laboratory which aims to translate new research discoveries into the clinic, and he has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Nature Medicine and Cancer Cell.