LAM Treatment Alliance Fast Tracking Treatment Research

Summit Participants

Scott Britz-Cunningham, MD, PhD
Dr. Britz-Cunningham is a staff physician in the Division of Nuclear Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and he is an Instructor in Radiology at Harvard Medical School.

James Butler, PhD
James P. Butler, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Physiology, Harvard School of Public Health and Assoc. Prof. Medicine, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Butler’s areas of interest and expertise span a broad variety of disciplines, including physics, mathematics, and physiology and pathophysiology (human and comparative, and primarily but not limited to pulmonary). His background includes a Ph.D. in physics, focused on oxygen transport in the lung, and more than three decades in the Dept. of Physiology (now Molecular and Integrative Physiological Sciences) at the Harvard School of Public Health. His current research efforts are directed toward investigations of airway smooth muscle cell mechanics and contractility, functional lung imaging with hyperpolarized noble gases, aerosol transport and deposition mechanisms in the lung, mesothelial lubrication in the pleural space, and the biomechanics of gait and posture in the geriatric population.

Sandra Dabora, MD, PhD
Sandra Dabora, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, a member of the Translational Medicine Division and the Hematology Division at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and a member of the Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. She has had an interest in tuberous sclerosis translational research for the past ten years. Her work includes TSC gene mutation analysis, genotype-phenotype studies, preclinical studies to evaluate novel therapies, and multi-center clinical trials relevant to TSC and LAM. She is currently directing a U.S. multi-center phase II clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy of sirolimus (rapamycin, Rapamune) for the treatment of kidney angiomyolipomas in patients with TSC and/or LAM.

Amy Farber, PhD
Amy Farber, PhD, is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of the LAM Treatment Alliance. She was diagnosed with LAM in April of 2005. Dr. Farber founded the LAM Treatment Alliance (LTA) with the goal of fast tracking bench to bedside research to find a treatment for LAM in time for women now living with the disease. Dr. Farber is trained as a social scientist focused on the study of law, medicine and society and received her BA from UC Berkeley and PhD from Harvard University. She has completed a Fellowship in Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School, is a member of the Harvard Medical School faculty and the Institutional Review Board of Brigham and Women's and Massachusetts General Hospitals in Boston. Dr. Farber lives in Cambridge, MA with her husband, Michael Nurok, and daughter, Charlotte.

Geraldine Finlay, MD
Dr. Finlay obtained her medical degree from University College Dublin, Ireland in 1990. She received her Internal Medicine training in St Vincents University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland. She obtained her MD thesis examining the role of Matrix Metalloproteinases in pathogenesis of COPD and Emphysema from University College Dublin Ireland in 1996. She received her higher training in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Tufts-New England Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts. She is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine at T-NEMC. As a Pulmonary and Critical Care physician, she has a strong clinical interest in Emphysema and lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM). She has been the recipient of the LAM Foundation Fellowship and Established Investigator awards. Dr Finlay's basic research interests focus on the mechanisms that control cell growth in tuberin null cells. In particular, her research has focused on the signaling mechanisms employed by growth factors and estrogen that lead to smooth muscle cell proliferation in tuberin null states such as lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) and therapeutic modalities that could potentially inhibit growth in tuberin null states.

John V. Frangioni, MD, PhD
John V. Frangioni, MD, PhD, is an attending physician in the Division of Hematology/Oncology, Department of Medicine, at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and an Associate Professor of Medicine and an Associate Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School. His academic training includes an Engineering Sciences degree from Harvard College, an M.D. from the Harvard/MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST Program), a Ph.D. from the Department of Cell Biology at the Harvard Medical School, internship and residency in Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and an Oncology fellowship at BIDMC. He has been board-certified in both Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology. Dr. Frangioni’s laboratory specializes in cancer imaging, with a particular focus on contrast agent/radiotracer development and optical imaging system development. His near-infrared fluorescence image-guided surgery system has already been translated to human clinical trials, and several novel contrast agents are in the process of being translated.

Victor Gerbaudo, PhD
Dr. Gerbaudo is the Director of the Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Program, and the Senior Administrative Director of Noninvasive Cardiovascular Imaging in the Department of Radiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Gerbaudo is a clinical Nuclear Oncology Scientist that completed his training in Nuclear Medicine and Positron Emission Tomography at UCLA School of Medicine, and in Nuclear Oncology and Therapy at the University of Miami School of Medicine. He has also completed a Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry course at the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Gerbaudo's teaching and research contributions expand on the in-vivo quantitative applications of tumor pathophysiology, imaging and therapy. His current research interests include: 1) the metabolic assessment of tumor aggressiveness in Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma, Esophageal cancer and other thoracic tumors; 2) dual-phase and dynamic FDG imaging for the quantitative in-vivo metabolic characterization of tumor invasion and metastasis, and 3) in-vivo metabolic grading and staging of tumors as they relate to histological grade, molecular pathology, surgical stage, response to therapy and survival.

Hilary Goldberg, MD
Dr. Goldberg is a pulmonologist in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. You will meet with Dr. Goldberg at the time of your initial evaluation at the Center for LAM Research and Patient Care Dr Goldberg will review all of your testing, consultations, and medical history as well as perform a comprehensive physical exam to provide an individualized care and treatment plan. She will be the primary physician in the management of your disease. Dr. Goldberg is also involved with the care of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital lung transplant population in both the inpatient and outpatient settings and is highly experienced in the management of the pulmonary and pleural manifestations of LAM.

Hiroto Hatabu, MD, PhD
Hiroto Hatabu, MD, PhD, BWH, Department of Radiology, Clinical Director of the MRI Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, an Associate Professor of Radiology in Harvard Medical School and. Recently, he co-founded the Center for Pulmonary Functional Imaging, where he serves as medical director. He has broad experience in diagnostic radiology, and analysis of lung physiology using MRI




Lisa Henske, MD
Elizabeth (Lisa) Petri Henske, MD recently joined the faculty at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, after spending 12 years at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, where she was a Senior Member. Her research focuses on lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) and tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC), a tumor suppressor gene disorder that leads to benign tumors in multiple organs, including the brain, heart, and kidney, as well as seizures, mental retardation, and autism. Her laboratory uses a broad range of approaches to study TSC, including genetic analyses of human tumor specimens, cell-based and biochemical assays, and mouse, Drosophila, and yeast models. Dr. Henske graduated summa cum laude from Yale University, attended Harvard Medical School, and was trained in Internal Medicine and Hematology-Oncology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, followed by postdoctoral training at the Brigham and Women's Hospital. She has received the Scientific Advancement Award from The LAM Foundation (2000), the Manuel Gomez Award from the Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance for "extraordinary scientific and humanitarian efforts to find a cure for Tuberous Sclerosis" (2005), and the Medtronic Prize from the Society for Women's Health Research (2007) for "an outstanding scientist whose work has led or will lead directly to the improvement of women's health." Dr. Henske is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation. She is Chairperson of an NIH study section (Cellular and Molecular Biology of the Kidney) and also Chairs the DOD Neurofibromatosis Research Program Integration Panel. She is an elected member of the Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance (TSA) Board of Directors, and Chair of the TSA Professional Advisory Board.

Andetta Hunsaker, MD

Mirko Hrovat

Xudong Huang, PhD
Dr. Huang is an Assistant Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, and the director for Conjugate and Medicinal Chemistry Laboratory, Division of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging at Radiology Department of Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH). Dr. Huang received his Ph.D. from MIT (Nuclear Science and Engineering). He performed his postdoctoral work at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)/Harvard Medical School. His current research thrust is to high-throughput screen, design, synthesize, and characterize targeted theranostic compounds for human diseases such as lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM), neurological disorders, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases, etc.

Francine Jacobson, MD, MPH
Francine is a Thoracic Radiologist with an MPH and long-standing interest in screening, particularly for women. Through work in the Perception Laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital, she has focused on earlier identification of lung cancer using CT scanning to improve the management of care for patients with small pulmonary nodules. She has also been able to apply the same principles of image perception to the study of chronic lung diseases, such as emphysema, and acute lung abnormalities due to infection. She collaborates with Thoracic Surgeons, Pulmonologists, Infectious Disease specialists, Epidemiologists and basic scientists. Focusing on gender-related differences in lung cancer and other lung diseases, she is an active creator of the Women's Lung Surgery Program at the Fish Center for Women's Health. Her activities include teaching, writing, and editing materials for patients; funded clinical investigations as a PI and co-investigator; and design of perception-related projects in conjunction with the Channing Laboratory, Draper Laboratory, Decision Systems Group (DSG), Surgical Planning Laboratory (SPL), and Perception Laboratories at BWH and MIT.

David Kwiatkowski, MD, PhD
Dr. David Kwiatkowski is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Senior Physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He has worked on tuberous sclerosis and related conditions for 17 years, including identification of the TSC1 gene in 1997. His current research interests include the human molecular genetics of TSC, the genetic basis of LAM, signaling pathways and functions of TSC1 and TSC2, development of mouse models of TSC and LAM, and exploration of therapeutic strategies for TSC and LAM in mouse models.


Joel Moss, MD, PhD
Joel Moss, MD, PhD, is Deputy Chief of the Translational Medicine Branch, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, Maryland. He graduated from Brandeis University (1967), summa cum laude, and received M.D.- Ph.D. (Biochemistry) degrees from New York University School of Medicine (1972). Following internship and residency (medicine; Johns Hopkins), he completed post-doctoral and pulmonary fellowships (NHLBI). At the NHLBI since 1974, he has co-authored over 500 scientific papers, edited/co-authored several books, and is a co-inventor of biotechnology patents. Dr. Moss was a member of the NHLBI Institutional Review Board from 1988-2006, and Chair from 1995-2006. Subjects of his research include lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM), with emphasis on roles of the LAM cell and susceptibility/modifier genes on disease progression.

Samuel Patz, PhD
Samuel Patz, PhD, is Associate Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and Scientific Director of the Center for Pulmonary Functional Imaging at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is an MRI physicist that has been developing novel techniques for over 25 years. He has been recognized for his work by election as a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biomedical Engineers. His recent work is in developing pulmonary applications of hyperpolarized 129Xe and he leads the group at BWH in this area. Hyperpolarized 129Xe is a MRI contrast agent that follows the same pathway as oxygen and allows one to measure important physiologoical properties of the lung noninvasively.

Besty Peters, BSN, RN
Betsy is the nurse coordinator for the Center for LAM Research and Clinical Care. She is the first point of contact for patients referred to the Center. Betsy helps guides patients through their initial orientation to the team, assists in patient travel arrangements, and coordinates patient care throughout each visit. She also coordinates LAM research for the Center. She received her BS in Bioscience and Technology at University of New Hampshire in 1997 and her BSN at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego 2003. She brings with her a nursing background in Critical Care and research experience in Clinical Trials.

Ivan Rosas, MD

George Washko, MD