President Biden Announces Key Appointments to National Cancer Advisory Board

WASHINGTON – Today, President Biden announced his intent to appoint six members to the National Cancer Advisory Board, which plays an important role in guiding the Director of the National Cancer Institute in setting the course for the national cancer research program. The National Cancer Advisory Board will complement the Cancer Moonshot, which President Biden reignited a year ago to end cancer as we know it today – including by making sure his Administration is investing in research and development that will help advance breakthroughs to prevent, detect, and treat diseases like cancer. 

• Margaret Anderson, Member, National Cancer Advisory Board
• Richard J. Boxer, Member, National Cancer Advisory Board
• Ysabel Duron, Member, National Cancer Advisory Board
• Julie Papanek Grant, Member, National Cancer Advisory Board
• Ana Navas Acien, Member, National Cancer Advisory Board
• Fred K. Tabung, Member, National Cancer Advisory Board

Margaret Anderson, Member, National Cancer Advisory Board

Margaret Anderson advises federal health and nonprofit clients as a Managing Director at Deloitte. She began her career with the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment where she explored the impact of biotechnology and genetics on society. She contributed to progress in several critical areas to advance the pace of research for patients – from genetics to HIV/AIDS, women’s health research, patient centricity, oncology, and the COVID-19 pandemic response. She later served as Executive Director of FasterCures, a center of the Milken Institute, prior to joining Deloitte. She serves on several nonprofit boards including Act for NIH, Allen Institute, FasterCures, and Friends of Cancer Research, and previous board membership includes Melanoma Research Alliance, National Health Council, and the NIH NCATS Advisory Council and Cures Acceleration Network.

Richard J. Boxer, Member, National Cancer Advisory Board

Richard J. Boxer, MD, FACS is a Clinical Professor of Urology at the David Geffen School at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a three-time cancer survivor who has cared for over 7,000 patients with cancers. Dr. Boxer has represented the U.S. at the World Health Organization as a private citizen, and he was recently on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Clinical Oncology Conquer Cancer Foundation. In April 2021 he was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award by the University of Wisconsin’s Medical School, its highest honor. He is on the Board of G4 Alliance, an international organization that promotes excellent care for all surgical patients.

Dr. Boxer has been an attending urologist for 16 years for our veteran heroes at VA hospitals in Miami and Los Angeles. He has published nearly 100 journal articles and book chapters on medical research. He also has published in the national press on health policy, including in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Real Clear Policy, JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, and Health Affairs. Dr. Boxer helped create the clinical protocols for telemedicine beginning 15 years ago, becoming the Chief Medical Officer of numerous telemedicine companies. He has dedicated his professional career to compassionate and uncompromising care for cancer patients and educating the public and the medical community.

Ysabel Duron, Member, National Cancer Advisory Board

Ysabel Duron, a native of California, is a veteran, multi-award winning broadcast journalist, who came into the cancer space after her own bout with Hodgkins Lymphoma in 1999. Cancer has become the number one cause of death for the Latino population, which at 62 million people is the largest ethnic group in the U.S. The Founder and Executive Director of The Latino Cancer Institute, Duron is nationally recognized as an influential patient advocate leader dedicated to building community knowledge and capacity to respond to the cancer challenge. She works to amplify Latino voices around issues of cancer; collaborate in research with institutions nationwide; and promote policy that addresses disparities in education and access, screening, diagnosis, and precision care for communities of color and vulnerable populations.

Duron currently serves on the Institutional Review Board for the NIH/All of Us Research program; was named in 2019 to the Oversight Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the country’s leading stem cell agency; and most recently joined the newly-launched ACS National Breast Cancer RoundTable.

Julie Papanek Grant, Member, National Cancer Advisory Board

Julie Grant is a General Partner at Canaan, a life science and technology venture capital fund. Grant founds, incubates, and invests in new biotech companies that turn scientific discoveries into medicines for patients in need. Grant was Co-Founder and CEO of Day One Biopharmaceuticals, Acting CEO of Reactive Biosciences, and founding investor in Synthekine and Nocion Therapeutics. Prior to Canaan, she held positions at Genentech across Development and Commercial primarily focused on new oncology products. She earned a B.S. in Molecular Biophysics and Chemistry from Yale, a MPhil BioScience Enterprise from Cambridge, and an MBA from Stanford.

Ana Navas Acien, Member, National Cancer Advisory Board

Dr. Ana Navas Acien, MD, PhD is a Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Her research and teaching focus on the role of the environment in common diseases with the goal of improving people’s health. She has more than 300 peer-reviewed publications, leads multiple NIH-funded research projects, and is recognized for bridging medical and environmental health sciences using a participatory approach. She has served as chair of the NIH Kidney, Endocrine, and Digestive Disorders study section and as a member of National Academy of Sciences committees, including those reviewing the health effects of inorganic arsenic and e-cigarettes. She directs the Columbia University Northern Plains Superfund Research Program, a center that integrates science, technology, and traditional knowledge to protect the Northern Plains water resources and Indigenous communities from hazardous metal exposures.

Dr. Navas Acien trained in Medicine obtaining her MD from the University of Granada, Spain, and completed her residency training in Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the Hospital La Paz, Madrid and her PhD in Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. Prior to her PhD, she worked at the Cancer Registry of the Andalusian School of Public Health, the Department of Non-communicable Diseases of the Pan American Health Organization, and the Division of Cancer and Environment of the Spanish National Center of Epidemiology. After a 15-year career at Johns Hopkins University, she joined Columbia University in 2016 where she is a member of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, Cancer Population Science Program.

Fred K. Tabung, Member, National Cancer Advisory Board

Fred K. Tabung is an Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University College of Medicine and Comprehensive Cancer Center, where he conducts a research program aiming to advance our understanding of how diet-related metabolic dysregulation impacts cancer risk and treatment response and to translate this knowledge into heathier eating and therapeutic diets. He is pioneering innovative approaches to studying the role of diet in cancer, some of which includes integration of the metabolic properties of specific foods beyond their caloric content. Tabung’s life experiences growing up and working in Africa strongly influenced his focus on diet and nutrition as a key determinant of health and disease, especially cancer. After obtaining his undergraduate degree in medical laboratory science, Tabung worked in the pathology laboratory of a reference hospital in Yaounde, Cameroon, helping to diagnose cancer, while also volunteering time to help start a population-based cancer registry for the city. Convinced that effective cancer prevention methods were sorely needed, Tabung pursued graduate-level education in nutrition and cancer epidemiologic research under the Fulbright Scholarship Program, where he focused upon the study, elucidation, and development of novel dietary pattern research methods.

Tabung’s work as a researcher has been recognized with multiple awards, including the Breakthrough Graduate Scholar Award and the Doctoral Achievement Award at the University of South Carolina in recognition of outstanding graduate school accomplishments. Most recently, he was named an American Cancer Society Research Scholar. Tabung was also appointed to serve in the Mechanisms Expert Committee advising the World Cancer Research Fund/American Institute for Cancer Research on potential biological mechanisms underlying the role of diet in cancer risk and prognosis, for their Global Cancer Update Program.

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