Committee

Axel Grothey, M.D., is a consultant in the Division of Medical Oncology, Department of Oncology, at Mayo Clinic. Dr. Grothey is also a member of Mayo Clinic Cancer Center, where he has served in various leadership positions. He holds the academic rank of professor of oncology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, and has teaching/examining privileges in Clinical and Translational Science at Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education.

Dr. Grothey received his medical degree at Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Germany, and completed residencies at West-German Tumorcenter and the Institute of Pathology at the University of Essen, followed by a residency and fellowship at the University of Bochum. He also completed a research fellowship at MD Cancer Center at the University of Texas. He joined Mayo Clinic as a Mayo Foundation Scholar in 2003 and became a consultant in 2005. Dr. Grothey's clinical interests focus on gastrointestinal cancers, in particular, colorectal cancer, anti-angiogenesis, signal transduction inhibitors, and clinical trial design and statistics. As a consultant and investigator, his research has been funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Institutes of Health, among other organizations. He currently chairs the NCI colon cancer task force and serves as a member of the gastrointestinal cancer steering committee of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, an NCI-funded cooperative group. He is also chair of the Academic and Community Cancer Research United international research network.

He currently holds professional positions in the Association of German Internists, German Cancer Association, Working Group of Experimental Cancer Research in Germany, American Association for Cancer Research, European Association for Cancer Research, American Society for Cell Biology, MD Anderson Associates, American Society of Clinical Oncology, European Society for Medical Oncology, German Association for Internal Oncology and Minnesota Medical Association. From 2014 to 2016 he was president of the International Society of Gastrointestinal Oncology.

Dr. Grothey serves in journal review and editorial activities for numerous medical journals and is editor for Clinical Colorectal Cancer, Emerging Cancer Therapeutics, PracticeUpdate Oncology and Therapeutic Advances in Medical Oncology. In educational activities, he has served as a teacher, and he is a five-time recipient of Teacher of the Year recognition at Mayo Clinic. Dr. Grothey has given many international, national and regional presentations, as well as invited and visiting professor presentations. He has co-authored more than 500 articles, books, book chapters, editorials, abstracts and letters.

Dr. Dawn Chong is a Consultant in the Division of Medical Oncology at National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS), with a clinical specialty in gastrointestinal cancers. She received the Singhealth Health Manpower Development Plan Fellowship Award in 2014 and completed a fellowship in Clinical and Translational Cancer Epidemiology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Boston. She was awarded the National Medical Research Council (NMRC) Clinician-Scientist Individual Research Grant New Investigator Grant aimed at investigating novel therapeutics for gliomas. She was also awarded the NMRC Research Training Fellowship Award in 2015 for which she obtained a degree in Master of Public Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her research focus is in cancer epidemiology, with an emphasis on identifying prognostic and predictive biomarkers of colorectal and hepatobiliary cancers. She has published in several peer-reviewed journals including Lancet Oncology and Gastroenterology, and served as a reviewer in journals including Journal of National Cancer Institute. Dr. Chong has mentored junior doctors and is actively involved in the training of students from the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and Duke-NUS Medical School.

Dr. Iain Tan is a Senior Consultant, Medical Oncologist and leads the colorectal cancer service within the GI cancer team at the Department of Medical Oncology, NCCS. He co-chairs the Colorectal Cancer Multidisciplinary tumor board and the centre's GI cancer Comprehensive Research Program. Concurrently, he is a clinician scientist at the Genome Institute of Singapore, A*Star. His bench-to-bedside research seeks to improve patient care by intelligently exploiting the latest scientific advances. His research focuses on metastasis, drug resistance and immunotherapy in colorectal cancer, with a special interest in non-invasive diagnostic tests particularly circulating tumor DNA.

He is a key driver of genomic medicine in Singapore and the disease champion for colorectal cancer in Singapore's POLARIS program which is developing the latest high-end molecular tests for Singaporeans. He has published widely in leading journals including Journal of Clinical Oncology, Lancet Oncology, Science Translational Medicine. He actively teaches specialists-in-training, young doctors and medical students and is a core faculty in both Medical Oncology (clinical competency committee) and Internal Medicine (research). He is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS. He has been recognized with multiple local and international awards for his clinical service and research including the Courage Award (SARS, 2003), ASCO Young Investigator Award (2010) and ASCO Merit Award (2011). In 2014, he received the Singapore Youth Award (2014), the country's highest award for youths.

Dr. Shaheenah Dawood is the Head of Medical Oncology and the Head of the Breast Cancer Program at Dubai Hospital in the United Arab Emirates. Dr. Dawood completed her M.B.B.Ch at Dubai Medical College in 1998 and a Master of Public Health degree at the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, USA in 2008. Her postgraduate medical training programs include a Fellowship at McGill University in Canada in 2006, and the Susan Komen Breast Cancer Fellowship at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in 2007.

Dr. Dawood is a member of various professional organizations, including the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR), the Canadian Association of Medical Oncologists, the Emirates Medical Association, and the Inflammatory Breast Cancer Research Group. She is also the co-director of the Middle East Research Network.

Dr. Dawood has been a primary author or collaborator on over 50 peer-reviewed publications in national and international journals. In addition, she has collaborated with other authors to write a number of book chapters. Dr. Dawood has also been involved as a journal reviewer and as an editorial consultant for many cancer-related journals.

Dr Toh is Senior Consultant and former Head at the Department of Medical Oncology and now Deputy Director, National Cancer Centre, Singapore. He graduated from the University of London, UK with an intercalated Bachelor of Science in 'Infection and Immunity' from St Mary's Hospital Medical School and qualified as a medical doctor from University of Cambridge, UK. Dr Toh obtained his Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians in 2003. He received his medical oncology fellowship training at the Singapore General Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA and at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA. Dr Toh is also alumni at the Harvard Business School. He is currently the vice-chairman of the Academic Clinical Programme (ACP) Oncology for Research and Education.

He is a recipient of the National Clinician Scientist Award for his pioneering work in cell therapy for cancer. He conducted the first cancer vaccine and T cell therapy clinical trials in Singapore, and continues to work actively in the field of cancer immunotherapy, immunology and inflammation. He also had a strong interest in drug development for gastrointestinal cancers including colon and liver cancer. Dr Toh is an Associate Professor and College Master at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School. He is also an adjunct Principal Investigator at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, A*STAR. He is council member in the Singapore Medical Association and the Singapore College of Physicians.

Dr Toh has published 75 per review journal papers to date including in Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology, Nature Genetics, Lancet Oncology, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Cancer Research, Clinical Cancer Research and Stem Cells.