GIST Awareness Day, is a time where GIST experts, patients, caregivers can come together to educate the public about this disease and advocate towards finding a cure. The Life Raft Group invited GIST patients and caregivers to celebrate GIST Awareness Day with us on July 13th from noon to 1:15pm ET. During this virtual event, Dr. Jason Sicklick of UC San Diego Health, Dr. John Glod of the National Cancer Institute, and Dr. Venkata Ramesh Bulusu of Cambridge University Hospital discussed GIST research updates. An interactive Q&A segment followed their presentations.
About Our Presenters
Dr. Ramesh Bulusu
Cambridge University Hospitals
Dr. Ramesh Bulusu has trained at the Beatson Oncology Centre, Glasgow, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge and Churchill hospital, Oxford, before taking up his consultant position in Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge in 2002.Dr Bulusu is the founder/chairman of the Cambridge Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumour (GIST) Study Group and the network lead for GISTs in Cambridge. He has served as the Track leader and member of the Sarcoma Track of the American Society of Clinical Oncology Scientific Committee from 2013-2017.
Dr Bulusu is passionate about GISTs and is currently heading a national focus group PAWS-GIST (paediatric, adolescent, wild type and syndromic).In 2014, he has established a national clinic in Cambridge for PAWS-GIST to facilitate research in this rare subgroup of GISTs.
He is actively involved in the training and education of health care professionals in the management of GISTs and has presented and lectured extensively, both nationally and internationally. He has co-authored the UK GIST guidelines in 2004, 2009 and 2017.
Dr. John Glod
NIH Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer
As a member of the Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics section of the NCI Pediatric Oncology Branch, Dr. Glod’s research program focuses broadly on developing new therapies for the treatment of pediatric cancer patients with a focus on rare solid tumors. Dr. Glod has expertise in the management and treatment of patients with rare tumor predisposition syndromes including multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2B and germline succinate dehydrogenase deficiency. He is the NCI principal investigator (PI) for a natural history study of patients with MEN2B and a single institution study of guadecitabine in SDH-deficient GIST, paraganglioma, and renal cell cancer as well as other early phase studies in pediatric oncology.
Dr. Jason Sicklick
Moores Cancer Center, US San Diego Health
is an NIH-funded investigator and Associate Professor of Surgery at the University of California San Diego Moores Cancer Center. He is a board-certified general surgeon and surgical oncologist specializing in the treatment of hepatobiliary diseases and sarcomas, including gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST). In 2016, Dr. Sicklick was named the GIST Clinician of the Year by the Life Raft GIST Support Group, the largest GIST patient advocacy group in the world. In 2018, Dr. Sicklick was selected as a James IV Association of Surgeons fellow. This highly prestigious international traveling fellowship is designed to promote communication and collaboration in the surgical community. In 2018 he also received the RARE Champion of Hope in Medical Care & Treatment Award from the Global Genes-Allies in Rare Disease. He obtained his medical degree from the UCLA School of Medicine, completed his general surgery residency at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, and completed a fellowship in surgical oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He joined the Division of Surgical Oncology at Moores Cancer Center in 2010.
Dr. Sicklick is an active member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Sarcoma and Hepatobiliary Committees, the Transatlantic Atlantic Retroperitoneal Sarcoma Working Group, and the SDH GIST Consortium. Dr. Sicklick is on the Editorial Boards of Annals of Surgical Oncology, Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery and Journal of Surgical Research. He has published in prestigious journals such as Clinical Cancer Research, Annals of Surgery, JAMA Surgery, Surgery, and Annals of Surgical Oncology. His translational and clinical research focus on molecular mechanisms of GIST, as well as precision medicine approaches to cancer therapy.
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