Dr. Anagnostou is an Associate Professor of Oncology, director of the Thoracic Oncology Biorepository, leader of Precision Oncology Analytics and co-leader of the Molecular Tumor Board and the Thoracic Oncology Precision Medicine Center of Excellence in the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins. She graduated from Medical School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece and received a PhD from the same institution. After completing her internal medicine residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital, she subsequently trained in Medical Oncology at Johns Hopkins.

Dr. Anagnostou is a translational cancer investigator, focusing on largescale genomic and liquid biopsy analyses in human cancers. Her group has discovered novel genomic mechanisms of response and resistance to immunotherapy and her research is particularly focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms of response and resistance to these therapies, capturing these by minimally invasive methods and translating this knowledge into novel technologies and innovative therapeutic approaches for cancer patients. She is the international study chair of the first ctDNAbased molecular response adaptive immuno-chemotherapy clinical trial for metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NCT04093167). Her long term goal is to transform medical oncology to personalized molecular oncology, where treatment decisions are tailored to cancer genomics and molecular real-time response assessments informed by liquid biopsies.

Dr. Antonoff completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania and earned her medical degree at the University of Minnesota, where she also completed internship and residency in General Surgery. Dr. Antonoff completed a fellowship in Cardiothoracic Surgery at Washington University in St Louis. She joined MD Anderson in 2014, where she’s currently an Associate Professor of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery and Program Director for Education. She is the Deputy Head of Education for Surgery.

Dr. Antonoff’s research interests include pulmonary metastatic disease, early detection of lung cancer, and local consolidative therapy for stage IV lung cancer. She is the surgical lead for several trials evaluating the role of local consolidative therapy for metastatic non-small cell lung cancer.

She holds several leadership roles in the STS, including chair of the STS Council on Member Engagement and its leadership Institute. She serves as the Vice President and President-Elect of the WTS. She further holds leadership roles within the AATS, the STSA, the AWS, IASLC, ESTS, and the TSDA, and Senior Editorial Board positions for Annals of Thoracic Surgery, Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Innovations, CTSNet, and Journal of Thoracic Disease.

Dr. Tina Cascone is an associate professor, physician-scientist in the Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX.

She received her degree in medicine (summa cum laude) from the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli in Naples, Italy. She earned her doctorate degree in Medical and Surgical Oncology and Clinical Immunology at the same university and completed her postdoctoral studies at MD Anderson Cancer Center where she studied the impact of antiangiogenic therapy on the tumor microenvironment. She completed her residency training in internal medicine at the Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO, and her medical oncology fellowship at MD Anderson Cancer Center. In 2017, Dr. Cascone became an instructor in the Advanced Scholar Program at MD Anderson Cancer Center, and in 2018 joined the faculty as a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology.

Dr. Quincy Chu is a medical oncologist who specializes in thoracic malignancies as well as early phase clinical trials. He received his M.D degree from University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. He is an investigator with the Cross Cancer Institute’s New Drug Development Program, and is also the incoming CCTG Investigational New Drug Committee Chair.

Dr. Parneet Cheema, MD, MBiotech, FRCPC, is Osler’s Medical Director of Cancer Care and Head of Cancer Research. As a medical oncologist, Dr. Cheema completed her postgraduate training at the University of Toronto, where she holds an academic appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine. Dr. Cheema is an international leader in lung cancer, precision medicine and immunotherapy treatments for cancer.

Dr. Tricia Cottrell is a thoracic pathologist at Queen’s University and a Senior Investigator with the Canadian Clinical Trials Group. She completed her MD/ PhD, Anatomic Pathology Residency, and post-doctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Cottrell’s research focuses on predictive biomarkers and pathologic response assessment in immunotherapy clinical trials.

Dr. Cottrell published the first characterization immune-mediated tumor regression following neoadjuvant anti-PD-1 therapy. The system is being validated as a potential standardized approach for quantifying pathologic response to neoadjuvant therapy across solid tumour types. Mentored by Drs. Janis Taube and Alex Szalay, Dr. Cottrell is a founding member of the AstroPath platform team. The platform is a rigorously optimized and validated end to end workflow for whole slide multiplex immunofluorescence. Dr. Cottrell’s lab is funded by OICR and CIHR to use AstroPath to identify predictive biomarkers in tumours from patients treated with immunotherapy, including non-small cell lung carcinoma and malignant pleural mesothelioma.

Dr. Nathalie Daaboul, MD. FRCPC is a hematologist-oncologist, with an interest in thoracic malignancy. She is currently practicing at Centre Intégré de la Montérégie, Charles LeMoyne hospital. She is also an assistant professor at the Université de Sherbrooke.

Dr. Nicole Ezer’s clinical research focuses on lung cancer screening, lung cancer epidemiology, comparative effectiveness, and outcomes research. Her main research interests are the application of artificial intelligence techniques to health administrative data, improving outcomes of patients screened for lung cancer, comparative effectiveness of different treatments of early-stage lung cancer, and the impact of racial and socioeconomic disparities in lung cancer management. She is also the lead clinical investigator for CONTAINCOVID19, a clinical trial on the treatment of out patients with COVID-19.

Dr. Pierre-Olivier Fiset is an Anatomical Pathologist and Associate Professor at the McGill University Health Centre. His practice includes mainly Thoracic Pathology (fellowship at University of Toronto) but also Medical Kidney Pathology, Gastrointestinal Pathology and Molecular and Biomarker Pathology.

Dr. Filippi is the Head of the Radiation Oncology Department at Istituto Nazionale Tumori in Milan and Associate Professor of Radiotherapy at the Department of Oncology at the University of Milan.

His research and clinical interests cover new concepts for lung cancer radiotherapy and the combination of thoracic radiation and immunotherapy. PI of several clinical trials and interdisciplinary research programs directed towards developing new IO-TKI combinations and radiation technical advancements, including next-generation IGRT and radiomics.

Dr. Patrick Forde treats patients with lung cancer, mesothelioma, and other thoracic cancers. He completed training in internal medicine and oncology in Ireland prior to undertaking a further fellowship at Johns Hopkins. He is currently Co-Director of the Division of Upper Aerodigestive Malignancies in the Department of Oncology at Johns Hopkins and directs the multidisciplinary Thoracic Oncology Clinical Research Program.

He has led development of a clinical-translational research program focused on the immuno-oncology of upper aerodigestive malignancies. Dr. Forde’s research examines the role of immunotherapy for mesothelioma and lung cancer and his work has led to the development of several ongoing phase 3 trials. In 2022, his work over several years, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, led to the FDA approval of neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy for the treatment of surgically operable lung cancer.

Dr. Forde serves as principal investigator for the thoracic cancer immunobiology biospecimen repository protocol at Johns Hopkins. He is focused on providing compassionate, state-of-the-art care for his patients in conjunction with a team of oncology specialist nurses, nurse practitioners, and dedicated staff.

Dr. Gaudreau is a medical oncologist and hematologist who completed his internal medicine, hematology and medical oncology fellowships at the University of Montreal. Following his clinical training, he completed a PhD program at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas as well as the CHUM Research Center in Montreal, which featured both fundamental sciences and early clinical trials. His clinical practice at the Cancer Centre of Southeastern Ontario focuses on thoracic malignancies.

Dr. Gaudreau is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Oncology and is cross-appointed to the Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences at Queen’s University. In addition, he is a Senior Investigator at the Canadian Cancer Trials Group for the Thoracic Oncology Site Committee and Investigational New Drug Program. His research interests include thoracic malignancies, clinical trials, investigational new drugs, translational research in thoracic oncology, mechanisms of resistance to immunotherapy, and preclinical models of non-small cell lung cancer.

Dr. Hanna is the Head of Division of Thoracic Surgery at McMaster University. His research interests are clinical trials in Robotic Surgery, and the role of AI in mediastinal lymph node staging.

Dr. Juergens is an Associate Professor of Oncology at McMaster University. She completed a fellowship in thoracic medical oncology at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institute as well as a Ph.D. in Clinical Investigation. She was on the faculty at Johns Hopkins from 2007-2010 until she joined the faculty at McMaster University in 2011.

Dr. Juergens’ clinical expertise is in lung and esophageal cancer. Her research focus has been in developmental therapeutics with a concentration on Phase I and II clinical trials. She chaired the Lung Disease Site Team from 2013-2023. She is also a patient advocate and serves as the Medical Advisory Committee Chair for Lung Cancer Canada. She is the Head of the Department of Clinical Trials at the Juravinski Cancer Centre. She is a member of the Escarpment Cancer Research Institute and the Centre for Discovery and Cancer Research at McMaster University. She is the past chair of the Investigational New Drug Committee of the Canadian Cancer Trial Group.

Dr. Kidane has a research interest in peri-operative care. His major interest is in lung-protective ventilation during thoracic surgery. He also has a research interest in health services and outcomes research as it relates to esophageal and lung cancer. Esophageal cancer is a devastating illness with historically poor survival; furthermore, the treatment of esophageal cancer can be difficult and cause significant reductions in the quality of life.

Dr. Kidane’s program of research in esophageal cancer brings together elements of surgical quality, patient quality of life, oncologic outcomes and health resource utilization with the ultimate goal of identifying the right treatment for the right patient at the right time.

Dr. Natasha Leighl leads the Thoracic Medical Oncology Group at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, and is Professor in the Department of Medicine, and Adjunct Professor in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. She holds the OSI Pharmaceuticals Foundation Chair in Cancer New Drug Development through the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation. She has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers, has held (as principal or co-investigator) over $600 million in peer-reviewed grant funding, and has mentored many oncology trainees that have gone on to leadership roles in oncology around the world. Recently, she was awarded the American Society of Clinical Oncology Excellence in Teaching Award (2019).

After receiving her MD from the University of Toronto, Canada, Dr. Leighl completed residencies in internal medicine at the University of Calgary and in medical oncology at the University of Toronto. She subsequently completed a Fellowship in Thoracic Oncology with Dr. Frances Shepherd at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Canada, a Fellowship in Clinical Oncology with Prof. Martin Tattersall at the University of Sydney in Australia, and received her Masters in Medical Science (MMSc) in Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

Dr Leighl’s main interest is in developing new treatments in lung cancer and improving lung cancer diagnostics. She is involved in clinical studies of novel agents for the treatment of thoracic cancers, has led several international and cooperative group studies in lung cancer and has served as a member of the Lung Disease Site Group Executive of the Canadian Cancer Clinical Trials Group. She was Co-Chair of the CCTG Committee on Economic Analysis, Congress Co-President of the 2018 World Conference in Lung Cancer, and serves on multiple committees including the ASCO Thoracic Guidelines Advisory Group, is co-section editor of The Oncologist and Current Oncology, an editorial board member of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, British Journal of Cancer, a member of the IASLC Quality and Value Committee, on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Lung Cancer Foundation of America, and was recently elected to the Board of Directors of the Americas Health Foundation. Previously she served as Web Editor of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, on the editorial board of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Canada Medical Oncology Examination Board, and is Past President of Lung Cancer Canada.

After her residency in Radiation Oncology at McGill University, Dr. Lecavalier- Barsoum, did a 2-year program of combined clinical fellowship in the Radiation Medicine Program at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and a Master in the Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto.

Dr. Moishe Liberman, is the Director of the CHUM Endoscopic Tracheobronchial and Esophageal Center and the inaugural Medical Director of the Multi disciplinary CHUM Robotic, Endoscopic and Minimally Invasive Surgery Program.

Dr. Liberman has ran over 60 clinical trials at the CHUM in neoadjuvant therapy, adjuvant therapy, surgical technology and novel devices. His research interests include minimally invasive techniques for staging/ treatment of lung cancer, ultrasonographic technology in thoracic surgery, trans-oral, non-surgical techniques for lung cancer diagnosis, staging and ablation, novel methods for performing VATS lobectomy.

His research laboratory focuses on technology assessment and technology development in minimally invasive thoracic oncology, endoscopy, robotics and natural orifice surgical techniques.

Thomas Marron MD PhD is the Director of the Early Phase Trials Unit at the Tisch Cancer Institute, and an Associate Professor of Medicine and an Associate Professor of Immunology and Immunotherapy.

His research focuses on development of novel immunotherapies and combinatorial therapeutic approaches for the treatment of thoracic malignancies, with an emphasis on translational studies in early-stage lung cancer.

He established The Neoadjuvant Research Group to Evaluate Therapeutics (TARGET), which is a large multidisciplinary team of clinicians and scientists tasked with defining how novel therapies work through biospecimen-heavy window-of-opportunity trials.

This program exploits novel immune monitoring platforms developed at Mount Sinai to characterize tissue, blood and stool from patients with lung cancer, enabling us to resolve the immunodynamic changes induced by standard therapies and by novel immunotherapies. Defining the determinants of spatial makeup of the tumor immune microenvironment, and resolving the complexity within the lymphoid and myeloid lineages using a variety of single-cell transcriptomic and proteomic, the aim of TARGET is to more rationally design cancer immunotherapy lung cancer trials moving forward to improve patient outcomes.

Dr. Anna McGuire is an active staff thoracic surgeon at Vancouver General Hospital and the University of British Columbia. Dr. McGuire is a researcher with specialty interests in lung cancer, esophageal cancer, minimally invasive surgical technology, diseases of the thymus, esophageal function and other surgical diseases of the chest.

Dr. McGuire‘s research focuses on lung cancer including, biomarkers, and thoracic surgical epidemiology. After graduating from the University of Toronto School of Medicine, Dr. McGuire completed general surgery residency at Queens University, thoracic surgery residency and advanced thoracic surgery fellowship at the University of Ottawa, and Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology with the University of London (LSHTM).

Since this time, Dr. McGuire returned home to Vancouver, and has been on faculty at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver General Hospital as a Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada board certified academic thoracic surgeon.

Dr. Barbara Melosky is a Professor of Medicine at the University of British Columbia and a Medical Oncologist in Vancouver at BC Cancer. She graduated from medical school at the University of Manitoba and did a residency in internal medicine and an oncology fellowship at the University of British Columbia.

Dr. Melosky specializes in the field of thoracic malignancies. Dr. Melosky sits on the Executive Lung Site Committee for Canadian Clinical Trials Group (CCTG). She chairs the annual Canadian Lung Cancer Conference attended by over 450 participants, for the last 23 years.

Dr. Melosky is proud to have built the British Columbia Lung Cancer Biobank which is actively used for research for all interested. She is published extensively and is considered a national and international expert in thoracic malignancies.

Dr. Meriem Messaoudene is specialized in human tumor immunology since her basic training at université Pierre et Marie Curie and Institut Pasteur (Paris, France). After a PhD training program at université Paris XI in NK cells and human metastatic melanoma, she undertook a post-doctoral study on the efficiency of the new class of T cell bispecific antibodies in breast cancer at Pr. Laurence Zitvogel’s lab (Institut Gustave Roussy, France) with a close collaboration to study the impact of the microbiota in the efficiency of the immune checkpoint blockades in NSCLC. Since 2018, she has started a post-doctoral at CRCHUM (Montreal, Canada) on microbiota and cancer in the new lab of Dr. Bertrand Routy with the challenge to develop new therapeutic strategies to safely increase ICB response through the manipulation of microbiota.

Dr. Drew Moghanaki is Professor and Chief of Thoracic Oncology in the UCLA Department of Radiation Oncology. He is co-director of the VA Greater Los Angeles Lung Precision Oncology Program and cochair of the VALOR phase III randomized trial for operable stage I non-small cell lung cancer.

Professor Isabelle Opitz is Director of the Department of Thoracic Surgery and Chair of the Lung Cancer Center at University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland, she is Professor/Ordinaria for Thoracic Surgery at the University of Zurich. Her clinical areas of expertise are the surgical treatment of lung cancer, pleural mesothelioma, chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension, and lung transplantation.

She has received several national and international awards for her research and has acquired more than 13 million Euro grant for her own research.

She is the author of more than 180 articles, including 141 original articles, multiple reviews, and book chapters. She is Past President and Past Treasurer of the European Society of Thoracic Surgeons, International Director of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, and will be co-chair of IASLC World Conference on Lung Cancer 2025.

Dr. Pompili is Associate Professor in Psychosocial Oncology and Honorary Thoracic Surgeon at University Hospital in Hull, UK. She is Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Leeds.

After completing her general thoracic surgical residency in Italy, Dr. Pompili obtained a PhD from the University of Leeds with a project investigating the Role of Patients Reported Outcomes (PROMS) In Risk Assessment and Treatment Outcomes for Early-Stage NSCLC. Her research focuses on two areas: a) patient-centred and personalised care for thoracic malignancies and b) evidence-based practice in lung cancer surgery with particular interest in risk-stratification and postoperative morbidities.

Dr. Pompili is recognized as founder of the European Society of Thoracic Surgeons (ESTS) Patient-Centred Working Group leading a European Quality of Life App project for thoracic surgical patients. She is active member of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) Quality of Life Group and ISOQOL, working on initiatives to implement PROMs in clinical practice.

She holds national and international leadership roles in the ESTS Women in General Thoracic Surgery Committee, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the British Thoracic Oncology Group. She has been recently elected co-chair of the IASLC Diversity and Inclusion Taskforce.

Boris Sepesi, MD FACS is the Director of General Thoracic Surgery and Thoracic Surgical Oncology at the Swedish Medical Center and HCA Healthcare in Denver, CO.

He has an expertise in the diagnosis and multidisciplinary management of operable NSCLC. He served as a PI or co- PI on a number of neoadjuvant clinical trials in non-small cell lung cancer, conducted collaborative translational biomarker research and authored or co-authored over 200 publications. His interests are neoadjuvant therapy , biomarker discovery, patient outcomes in NSCLC.

Dr. Benjamin Shieh is an assistant professor of medicine at McGill University and associate member in the Gerald Bronfman department of oncology. He is a respirologist by trade and has completed fellowships in interventional pulmonology and thoracic oncology at the University of Calgary. His interests range from the workup and diagnostics of thoracic tumors to their systemic treatment.

Dr. Stephanie Snow is a staff Medical Oncologist at the QEII hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia, treating thoracic and GI malignancies. After pursuing undergraduate training at McGill, she completed her training at Dalhousie, where she is now a full professor in the Faculty of Medicine.

Dr. Snow has a strong interest in Medical Education and is Vice Chair of the Royal College Medical Oncology Examination Board. From a research perspective she is involved in clinical research, is Associate Editor of the peer reviewed journal Current Oncology and has been widely published in prominent journals.

Finally, Dr. Snow is active in patient advocacy, serving as the current President of Lung Cancer Canada, and sits on the medical advisory committees of several other patient advocacy groups in colorectal and gastric cancer.

Dr. Janis Taube is a professor of dermatology and pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a member of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. Her area of clinical expertise is dermatopathology.

Dr. Taube serves as the Director of the Division of Dermatopathology and as the Assistant Director of the Dermatoimmunology Laboratory at the School of Medicine.

Dr. Taube received her undergraduate degree in engineering from Duke University. She earned her M.D. from Tulane University and her M.Sc. in molecular medicine from University College London. She completed her residency in pathology at Johns Hopkins where she also served as the chief resident, before undertaking a dermatopathology fellowship at Stanford University. In2009, Dr. Taube returned to Johns Hopkins for her certification in the Melanoma Clinic.

She is one of the lead scientific researchers in the Department of Dermatology at Johns Hopkins. She has written over 180 peer-reviewed publications, and her research has been cited over70,000 times. In addition to running her own research laboratory, she serves as the co-Director of the Mark Foundation Center for Advanced Genomics and Imaging and also as the co-Director of the Tumor Microenvironment Core Laboratory for the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.

Dr. Tsuboi is the Chief and Director of the Department of Thoracic Surgery and Oncology, the National Cancer Center Hospital East, Kashiwa, Japan. The Visiting professor of the Department of Surgery in Yokohama City and University Graduate from the school of Medicine, Yokohama, Japan.

Dr. Tsuboi is a past Board Director of International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), a past chair of the Lung Cancer Surgical Study Group(LCSSG) of the Japan Clinical Oncology Group(JCOG), as well as the past Board Director of World Association of Bronchology and Interventional Pulmonology (WABIP).

Dr Tsuboi is involved in numerous perioperative adjuvant and surgical clinical trials, such as JCOG0804/WJOG4507L: Sub lobar resection for small size peripheral lung adenocarcinoma, JCOG0802/WJOG4607L: Segmentectomy versus lobectomy in small-sized peripheral non-small cell lung cancer.

He has participated as principal investigator or steering committee member in several global studies in neoadjuvant/adjuvant environments, including ADAURA, Neo-ADAURA, KN-671,LIBRETTO-432, and so on.

Dr. Heather Wakelee is a Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Oncology at Stanford University and Deputy Director of the Stanford Cancer Institute. Dr. Wakelee serves as the Past President of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) and is a Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (FASCO). She is a graduate of Princeton University and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and completed her post-graduate training at Stanford University.

As an experienced lung cancer investigator, Dr. Wakelee has authored or co-authored over 300 medical articles on lung cancer and thymic malignancies and is involved in dozens of clinical trials involving adjuvant therapy, immunotherapy (particularly use of immunotherapy in the perioperative setting for NSCLC), anti-angiogenesis agents and targeted drugs focused on many specific lung cancer subtypes defined by mutations such as EGFR, ALK, ROS1, RET, and BRAF.

Dr. Walsh is an Associate Professor at the Goodman Cancer Institute and Department of Human Genetics at McGill University. He currently holds the Rosalind Goodman Chair in Lung Cancer Research. Dr. Walsh’s lab uses spatial technology combined with artificial intelligence to help develop personalized medicine strategies for cancer patients. His recent work focuses on understanding the tumor immune microenvironment and how we can leverage spatial information to better understand cancer progression and response to therapy.

Dr. Wen-Zhao Zhong is the Director of Guangdong Lung Cancer Institute, and Chief Physician of Thoracic Neoplasms Surgery in Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China.

He is the doctoral supervisor of School Of Medicine, South China University Of Technology and Southern Medical University. He performs over 1000 minimally invasive surgeries of lung cancer per year and has undertaken four national projects supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Relevant researches have been published in Lancet Oncol, J Clin Oncol, J Thorac Oncol, Transl Lung Cancer Res, Nature Communications, NPJ Precision Oncology, Cancer, Oncologist, Lung Cancer, ATS/JVCTS/EJCTS, Ann Surg Oncol, BMC Cancer, Clin Lung Cancer and Cancer Lett.