Dr. Disis is a Professor of Medicine and Adjunct Professor of Pathology and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Washington (UW), and a Member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC). She is the Associate Dean for Translational Science in the UW School of Medicine. Dr. Disis received her M.D. from the University of Nebraska Medical School and completed a residency and chief residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Her fellowship in oncology was done at UW/FHCRC. Dr. Disis is an expert in breast and ovarian cancer immunology and translational research. She is one of the pioneering investigators who discovered that HER-2/neu is a tumor antigen. Her work has led to several clinical trials which evaluate boosting immunity to HER-2/neu with cancer vaccines. Dr. Disis is a member of Alpha Omega Alpha and the American Society of Clinical Investigation. She is the Deputy Editor for Translational Oncology for the Journal of Clinical Oncology, and is a member of several committees and task forces for both the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). She is also the Director of the Institute of Translational Health Sciences and the Director for the Center of Translational Medicine in Women’s Health at the UW. Her multifaceted research program within the Tumor Vaccine Group includes the discovery of new antigens for breast and ovarian cancer and the development of vaccine and cellular therapy targeting those antigens.

Dr. Salazar is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Oncology at the University of Washington (UW). She is a member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC)/UW Cancer Consortium Breast Cancer and Gynecologic Cancer Program; and UW Tumor Vaccine Group. Dr. Salazar completed medical school and Internal Medicine residency training at the University of Minnesota, and completed her fellowship training in Hematology/Oncology at the UW/FHCRC. Dr. Salazar is a translational investigator with expertise in clinical immunotherapy and has extensive experience in conducting investigator-initiated clinical research. She holds R21 and RO1 awards from the NIH/NCI to conduct novel immunotherapeutic studies. Dr. Salazar’s research is focused on the development of novel Phase I and II cancer vaccine studies for the treatment and/or prevention of breast cancer. In addition to her research studies, Dr. Salazar has an active breast oncology clinic at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and is also the Medical Director of the UW Medical Center Clinical Research Center.

Dr. Gray is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the UW. She received her M.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 1997, and completed her Obstetrics and Gynecology residency training at the UW. She completed her fellowship in Gynecologic Oncology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Concurrently, she was an instructor for the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1999, Dr. Gray received the Berlex Award for Best Teaching Second Year Resident at UW, as well as the Gallway Fellowship in Gynecologic Oncology at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. In 2001, she received the David C. Figge Award for Outstanding Chief Resident in Gynecologic Oncology, UW. She is presently conducting ovarian cancer research under a grant from the Gynecologic Cancer Foundation.

Ms. Apodaca received a B.S. in Medical Technology from University of Washington. Her past experiences include supervising a clinical laboratory and managing the central lab for a multi-center clinical trial.

Dr. Broussard received her MD from Cornell University Medical College in New York. She then completed residency in Internal Medicine, followed by fellowship in Gastroenterology at the University of Washington. She works as an attending at Harborview Medical Center. Liz joined the TVG in May 2009 and will be working to develop a panel of autoantibodies that can effectively discriminate patients with colon cancer from controls.

Dr. Cecil received her BS in Microbiology from Michigan State University in 1996. After graduation, she joined a B-cell biology lab at The Scripps Research Institute focused on rheumatologic diseases. She then moved over to the UC San Diego’s Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology Department in 2000 and worked as a technician. In 2008 she received her Ph.D. from UC San Diego in Molecular Pathology examining the role of non-traditional inflammatory cytokines in the modulation of the pathogenesis and progression of osteoarthritis. Currently Dr. Cecil is working with TVG on the development and characterization of peptide-specific vaccines for breast and ovarian cancers.

Dr. Dang received her Ph.D. in Immunology from University of Surrey, United Kingdom in 1996. She completed her postdoctoral studies in the Reproductive Immunologic Laboratory at Swedish Medical Center, Denver, Colorado in 2000. Dr. Dang is an expert T cell biologist. She has extensive experience in projects related to T cell therapy in both academia and industry. Within the Tumor Vaccine Group she is involved with the development of adoptive T cell immunotherapy for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer, including establishing ex vivo T cell expansion as a GMP technique.

.Dr. Engel completed her BS in biology at College of Idaho in Caldwell, Idaho in 2003. She then spent a year in Hamilton, MT working as an intern at Rocky Mountain Laboratories (division of NIAID) in the Scrapie group under Dr. Byron Caughey of the Laboratory of Persistent Viral Disease. Being affiliated with the NIH led Dr. Engel to discover a graduate partnership program in biomedical sciences with Georgetown University. She recently completed her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular & Cellular Biology from Georgetown University-NIH program and has taken a post-doctoral training award with Bastyr University. Dr. Engel is excited to begin a collaborative project between Bastyr University and the UW-Tumor Vaccine Group doing a project that touches on her favorite topics of natural products, immune regulation, and cancer therapies.

Dr. Herendeen earned his doctoral degree in Biology at UC San Diego. With a fellowship from the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, he completed his postdoctoral training The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics. Dr. Herendeen has several years of experience performing cancer drug discovery research in the biotechnology industry. He brings expertise in biochemistry and cancer cell biology to address the challenges of cancer vaccine development at TVG.

Dr. Wu received her Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She completed her post-doctoral training at UW-Madison and the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. During her tenure at the University of Michigan, she studied genetics and cell biology of inflammatory breast cancer. She has extensive expertise on molecular biology, bioinformatics, cell biology, and anti-tumor drug development. Currently she is working on the identification of tumor biomarkers and the development of multi-antigen tumor vaccines.

Mr. Yang received a Master's degree in biochemistry from Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry, Chinese Academy of Science. After a few years as a visiting scientist in Dr. George Stamatoyannopoulos's lab in Division of Medical Genetics, University of Washington, he joined Dr. Hellstrom's lab working on tumor antigen discovery and early detection of human tumors as well as tumor-based therapy of mouse melanoma models.

Ms. Childs has been with the Tumor Vaccine Group for over 5 years where she is involved with the management of our regulatory obligations as they relate to the FDA, NIH, and Institutional Review Boards for all of our clinical trials. Ms. Childs has over 14 years experience in clinical research where she started as a student performing laboratory experiments in a pharmacology lab at the Arizona Cancer Center and later became the data manager for a large Phase III cancer prevention trial also at the Arizona Cancer Center. She is committed to the conduct of our research studies and the overall safety of our study participants.

Dr. Coveler received his M.D. from Northwestern University in 2002. He completed his Internship at Baylor College of Medicine and his Residency at the University of Washington. He is now a Senior Fellow at UW/Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC) in Oncology / Hematology. Dr. Coveler has worked with the Tumor Vaccine Group since 2005 and continues to work on bringing novel agents from the bench to the bedside.

Ms. Higgins received a B.Sc. in Therapeutic Recreation in 1979 and a B.S. in Nursing in 1999. With over 25 years of experience in the health care field, Doreen brings a high level of quality to her patient care and versatile people skills. She works closely with physicians, patients, families, and other staff members to educate, recruit and enroll patients. She coordinates patient care, provides follow-up, gathers and disseminates information, and serves as an excellent clinical resource.

Ms. Parker received a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at Central Washington University in 2005. She works closely with physicians, patients, families, and other staff members to educate, recruit and enroll patients. She also helps with the management of our regulatory obligations as they relate to the FDA, NIH, and Institutional Review Boards for our clinical trials. She is committed to the conduct of our research studies and the overall safety of our study participants.

Ms. Bayon received her Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Baguio, Baguio City, Philippines, a Registered Nursing Assistant license (Washington State), and experience in finance and mortgage lending. She joined the Tumor Vaccine Group in March 2007 as a Program Assistant. Her duties and support for the Tumor Vaccine Group includes coordinating the purchasing cycle, maintaining office machines and supplies, maintaining record keeping/filling, room scheduling for meeting/trainings and handling a variety of accounting tasks.

Jennifer joined the TVG in June 2010 and is responsible for managing the day-to-day research and administrative operations of the group and assists Principal Investigators, clinical and lab staff in maintaining their research grants and programs. She oversees the group’s fiscal operations and outreach endeavors and serves as representative for internal and external university academic departments, research centers, private sponsors and government agencies.