University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute Staff
Nancy E. Davidson, MD
Nancy E. Davidson, MD, is internationally renowned for her research involving breast cancer. Prior to joining the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and UPMC Cancer Centers, she served as director of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center’s Breast Cancer Program in Baltimore and as professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She also held the Breast Cancer Research Chair in Oncology, with a joint appointment in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Dr. Davidson has published key findings on the role of hormones, particularly estrogen, on gene expression and cell growth in breast cancer. She has guided several important national clinical trials of potential new therapies, including chemoendocrine therapy for premenopausal breast cancer and antiangiogenesis therapy for advanced disease.
Dr. Davidson received her bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College and medical degree from Harvard Medical School. She completed a residency in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital and a fellowship at the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Davidson recently served as president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and is a member of the scientific advisory board of numerous foundations. She has received many awards, including the Brinker International Award for Breast Cancer Research.
Michael Becich, MD, Ph.D.
Dr. Becich is a Professor of Pathology as well as Information Sciences and Telecommunications and serves as the Director of the Center for Pathology Informatics and Vice-Chairman of Pathology Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center- Shadyside Hospital/Hillman Cancer Center. Since 2001 he has also served as Director of the UPCI’s Benedum Oncology Informatics Program. With Bill Gross, Systems Manager, he led the Anatomic Pathology Lab Information System (LIS) team to revamp the LIS system; the team developed and implemented two imaging systems and integrated 18 UPMC hospitals onto a common LIS platform. He founded the nation’s first Pathology Informatics fellowship program, which is now managed by James Harrison, MD, PhD. In 1996 Dr. Becich’s team launched a conference, Advancing Practice, Instruction and Innovation through Informatics, an annual conference that is in its 10th year. In close cooperation with Bruce Friedman, MD, in 2000 he co-founded the Association for Pathology Informatics and is the immediate past-president.
Dr.
Becich holds an MD and a PhD in Experimental Pathology form
Northwestern University and developed his interest in Pathology
Informatics at Washington University where he became a staff
anatomic (surgical) pathologist after completing his pathology
residency. His research interests are in cancer biology and
biomedical informatics as applied to Pathology and Oncology.
His current research focuses on developing applications and
databases to manage the analysis of expression data derived
from high throughput genomics. He is a member of 14
professional societies and has contributed to over 100 papers
and has several on-line presentations that contribute to the
mission of Pathology and Oncology.
Joseph Kelley, MD
Dr. Joseph L. Kelley graduated medical school from St. Louis University School of Medicine in 1985. After completing medical school he was accepted into the residency program at the University of Pittsburgh/Magee-Womens Hospital where he spent the next four years. In 1988 Dr. Kelley was accepted into the Rutledge Fellowship at the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center where he completed a fellowship in gynecologic oncology.
Dr.
Kelley's research interests center around the application
of clinical trials for the treatment of gynecologic and breast
malignancies. Dr. Kelley serves as the Co-Principal
Investigator (PI) of the Gynecologic Oncology Group (GOG).
Additionally, he serves as a PI on a number of studies with
application of traditional as well as novel therapeutic
approaches to malignancies. Dr. Kelley's area of surgical
interest includes the application of sentinel node technology
to gynecologic malignancies.
Dr. Kelley
has strong collaborative ties with Magee-Womens Research
Institute as well as the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center
and works with colleagues in areas of interest such as DNA
repair in breast and gynecologic malignancies as well as
investigating the role of application of pharmacokenetics to
these malignancies.
Robert P. Edwards, MD
Dr Edwards received his undergraduate degree summa cum laude in biology and chemistry from Gettysburg College, attended medical school at The University of Pittsburgh, completed a surgical internship at The University of California, San Francisco followed by a four-year obstetrics and gynecology residency at The University of Pittsburgh, Magee-Womens Hospital. This was followed by a two-year post-doctoral fellowship on a national research service award under Dr. Jiri Mestecky at The University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Edwards then completed a two-year clinical gynecologic oncology fellowship prior to accepting a position as assistant professor at The University of Pittsburgh, Magee-Womens Hospital.
Dr. Edwards was
the division director at Magee-Womens Hospital from 1993
through 2001. He then took a position as a Thomas G. Day, Jr
Endowed Chair and medical director of gynecologic oncology at
The University of Louisville from 2002 through March 2005. In
April 2005 Dr. Edwards returned to The University of
Pittsburgh, Magee-Womens Hospital as vice-chair of clinical
affairs and director of gynecologic oncology research and the
Ovarian Cancer Center of Excellence.
Dr.
Edwards is the principle investigator of the Gynecologic
Oncology Group for The University of Pittsburgh. As professor
of obstetrics and gynecology, he has numerous publications on
transitional and translational research, including several
publications looking at ovarian cancer and cervix cancer
immunotherapy.
Dr. Edwards' current
active research interests include longstanding interests in
collecting surgical specimens for correlative studies of
biologic therapies. He has a personal gynecologic tissue
collection of over 9000 specimens from various clinical trials.
He helped initiate the tissue procurement program at
Magee-Womens Hospital in 1994 and established a gynecologic
oncology tissue bank at The University of Louisville upon his
arrival in 2002.
William L. Bigbee, PhD
Anna Lokshin
Julie DeLoia, PhD
Francismary Modugno, PhD, MPH
Anil Parwani, MD, PhD
Dr. Parwani is a board certified pathologist based at the Shadyside Hospital in Pittsburgh. He has received training in both Clinical and Anatomical Pathology and subspecialty training in Genitourinary Pathology. Dr. Parwani completed graduate (doctoral) training in molecular biology and immunology at the Ohio State University. All his pathology training was at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD, and he attended medical school at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. Dr. Parwani has also completed two years of research training in the area of molecular virology and vaccine studies.
Dr. Parwani is the Medical Director of the
Anatomical Pathology Laboratory Information Systems at
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and is based at
the Shadyside Hospital in Pittsburgh since summer of 2004. He
and his team are responsible for implementation and support of
anatomical pathology laboratory information systems at the
academic hospitals and multiple community hospitals, which are
part of UPMC system. He is currently involved in the synoptic
report conversions across the UPMC system. Synoptic reporting
allows for standardized report generation with data entered at
the time of diagnosis as common data elements which is amenable
to easier link with existing or newly-created databases,
allowing an easier access of this data for clinical and
research missions. His training and clinical expertise will be
of value in cross-integration of key elements of clinical and
pathology information via synoptic reporting and other
programming enhancements.
Ashokkumar A. Patel, MD, MT(ASCP)
Dr. Patel is a Research Associate at the Center for Pathology Informatics. He is the lead data manager for several projects, including The Cooperative Prostate Cancer Tissue Resource, The Pennsylvania Cancer Alliance Bioinformatics Consortium , The Shared Pathology Informatics Network (SPIN) and the gene expression data from the Molecular Reclassification of Prostate Cancer initiative. He is also one of the major contributors for standardizing the Common Data Elements for data entry and for implementing quality assurance protocols for the data entered into the databases for both the CPCTR and PCABC.
Dr. Patel also has an interest in
High-throughput High-resolution imaging systems. His experience
with the Interscope and Aperio Imaging systems has led him to
develop ways to implement this technology within the clinical
setting. He has implemented a virtual quality assurance
protocol for slides reviewed for the CPCTR project. He is
currently involved with Dr. Drazen Jukic in developing a
virtual slide set for the pathology residents at the University
of Pittsburgh. He is also currently working with Drs. Monzon,
Gilbertson and Chandran in developing a quality assurance
protocol using an imaging component for the Laboratory
Information Management Systems for the Cancer Biomarker
Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Patel's primary research interests
include High-throughput High-resolution imaging, Tissue/cDNA
Microarray, Pathology Informatics, Molecular Diagnostics.
Rajiv Dhir, MD
Rajiv Dhir is a board certified pathologist. He is certified in both Clinical and Anatomic Pathology. He also has subsequent subspecialty training in Genitourinary Pathology. All his pathology training was at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and he attended medical school at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India.
Dr. Dhir has
been the Director of the Health Sciences Tissue Bank at the
University of Pittsburgh since November of 1997. He has been
responsible for establishing focused tissue banking across the
University of Pittsburgh Health Systems enterprise. This
currently encompasses five flagship academic hospitals and 17
community hospitals. He has overseeing implementation of a
variety of different software applications focused on tissue
banking. His training, clinical expertise and experience in
Genitourinary Pathology has been a significant help in
establishing the prostate research repository at the University
of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Dhir is a member of
the IRB committee of the Department of Pathology. In addition
he has served as an institutional representative at various
national forums as well as participated in NCI related thought
groups focused on IRB and patient rights issues. He is the
leader of the Institutional Honest Broker Facility at the
University of Pittsburgh.