International Faculty

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 Michele Teng is Team Head of the Cancer Immunoregulation and Immunotherapy Laboratory at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Australia. She completed her PhD in 2006 at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and University of Melbourne, Australia. Her group is investigating how tumour-induced immune suppression impedes the effective treatment of established cancer. Specifically, she is interested in examining the role of T regulatory cells (Tregs), T-cell anergy/exhaustion, and the IL-23-associated cytokine family in the local tumour microenvironment using experimental and de novo models of cancer. In addition, her group is determining how scheduling of immunotherapies can further improve their antitumour efficacy and have developed a preclinical mouse model to assess how different combination therapies impact on tumour immunity and immune related adverse events.

After a training in Internal medicine and Gastro Enterology and a Ph.D in the program of Molecular Oncology at the Center for Human Genetics, KULeuven, I became in 09-2003 an Associate Professor in the Dept of Gastro Enterology, Digestive Oncology Unit, UZ Leuven. I work as a part time clinician, part time researcher (Senior Clinical Investigator of the Fund for Scientific Research- Flanders (Belgium)) , with a focus on basic and translational research in colorectal cancer.

My translational research projects involve molecular subclassification of colorectal cancer, prognostic and predictive marker discovery, biomarker test qualification and innovative trial designs. I work closely with the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics 4 dedicated bio statisticians for over 7 years. Currently active reanalysis of trials for subgroup identification and running of prospective platforms for stratified trials. This includes generation of relevant biomarker classifiers, drug response signatures and setup of clinical grade biomarker detection infrastructure

My basic research projects focus on the study of ZIC2 transcription factor in wnt and nodal signalling.

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.

Prof Price's research interest has been gastrointestinal cancer since 1998 when he was accepted for a Gastrointestinal Clinical Research Fellowship at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London. Since returning to Adelaide in 2000 he has had a pivotal role in the ongoing development of the Clinical Research Unit at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital and he is now Head of the combined Haematology/Oncology Unit. In May of 2004 he was appointed a Director of the Australasian Gastrointestinal Trials Group board and is the current Chair of the group. He is a member of the American Clinical Oncology Society, International Society of Gastrointestinal Research and European Society of Oncology in addition to the Medical Oncology group of Australia for which he is a specialist adviser on gastrointestinal chemotherapy. Prof Price has authored or co-authored over 145 publications in peer reviewed journals