TBBCF Scientific Advisory Committee

Founding a non-profit organization is a consuming process wholly reliant on the passion and commitment of volunteers. Funding breast cancer research also requires technical expertise to analyze and develop funding mechanisms, a fluency in the sciences, and especially, a vision of the future: a futurist's gaze toward the novel therapies and people who might unravel the mysteries of breast cancer at the cellular level, promoting targeted therapies to combat the disease. The Terri Brodeur Breast Cancer Foundation (TBBCF) Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) members volunteered to lead this mission while pursuing their own demanding careers as scientists, laboratory managers, business leaders, and scientific researchers.

Dr. Nicholas Saccomano leads the team. As a beloved and esteemed colleague to the late founder Norma Logan, Nick's passion achieved one of Norma's great dreams - significant grant money directed to young, ambitious breast cancer researchers within the first year of the Foundation's operational calendar. Working as a team under a tight year end deadline to identify the first TBBCF scientific grant recipients, the SAC identified candidates and selected three young scientists pursuing varied research targets. The SAC's effort was Herculean, mastered without complaint at the year-end deadline. Because of them, in the past five years TBBCF has awarded $1,800,000 in research dollars to fund new efforts to eradicate breast cancer. We salute the TBBCF Scientific Advisory Committee. Below are short biographies of each valued member of the SAC:

Nicholas A. Saccomano, Ph.D., Chair

Nick Saccomano is currently Chief Technology Officer of SomaLogic Inc. located in Boulder Colorado. Prior to this, Nick was a Senior Vice President at Pfizer Inc and Chief Science Officer of Bend Research.

Dr. Saccomano joined Pfizer in 1984 as a research scientist in the Central Nervous System therapeutic area. In 1980, Dr. Saccomano received his B.S. in chemistry from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He earned his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Columbia University in 1984 under the guidance of Professor Gilbert Stork.

Howard Brensilver, MD

Howard Brensilver is an internist practicing general internal medicine in the New London area. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia College, New York, New York and his Doctor of Medicine from Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, New York, New York. He has been on the staff at Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in New London, Connecticut since 1973.

Dr. Brensilver is a member of the Board of Directors of the Terri Brodeur Breast Cancer Foundation.

Michael J. Garabedian, Ph.D.

Michael J. Garabedian is an Associate Professor of Microbiology and Urology at the NYU School of Medicine. He received dual Bachelor of Science degrees in chemistry and biology from the University of California, Irvine, a PhD in biochemistry from Brandeis University, and received postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco. His current research interests center on the role of steroid hormone receptors, including the estrogen and androgen receptors, in breast and prostate cancer. (Receptors are a protein on the surface or inside of a cell that connect to a certain hormone and cause changes in a cell. Androgens are hormones that help to develop sex organs in men. They also help to keep up sexual function in both women and men. In women, most of them are changed into estrogen by fat and muscle cells. After menopause, when the ovaries no longer make estrogen, this is the main source of estrogen made in the body.)

Dr. Garabedian has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles in leading scientific journals, and has been awarded grants from the National Institute of Health, American Cancer Society, and the Department of Defense for his research on breast and prostate cancer. He has served on numerous local, national and international grant review panels for breast cancer research, and is on the editorial boards of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Molecular Endocrinology, and is a founding editorial board member of the Nuclear Receptor Signaling Atlas (NURSA) open-access journal.

John LaMattina, Ph.D.

John L. LaMattina is the former president of Pfizer Global Research and Development. He retired from this position in 2007 after a 30 year career. He is currently on the Board of Directors of the Neurogen Corporation and Human Genome Sciences Inc. Dr. LaMattina is a 1971 graduate of Boston College where he received a B.S. degree in Chemistry. He received a Ph.D. from the University of New Hampshire in 1975 in Organic Chemistry and then spent two years at Princeton University with professor E.C. Taylor as a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow.

Dr. LaMattina is the President, Board of Directors of the Terri Brodeur Breast Cancer Foundation.

Susan Logan, Ph.D.

Susan Logan is an Assistant Professor in Urology and Pharmacology at New York University School of Medicine. Her laboratory studies the role of the androgen steroid hormone receptor in prostate and breast cancer. These studies focus on the interaction of the androgen receptor (AR) with other cell signaling pathways and the mechanism of AR-mediated gene transcription. The research is designed to understand how aberrant regulation of these processes promotes human cancers. Dr. Logan is a member of the New York University Cancer Center and is involved in graduate education and admissions. She serves on grant review committees for multiple agencies that support cancer research.

Michael J. Morin, Ph.D.

Mike Morin graduated from UMass Lowell with a B.Sci. in Biological Sciences, and went on to the Roswell Park Graduate Division, SUNY at Buffalo, to earn a Ph.D. in Cancer Pharmacology. He then continued his training as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in Cancer Pharmacology at the Yale University Cancer Center. Before joining Pfizer, Dr. Morin was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Director of the Tumor Cell Biology Program at the Cancer Center, Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago. Mike Morin joined Pfizer in 1991, first working as a lab supervisor and soon thereafter as a manager. In his most recent role, Mike was a Vice President of Drug Discovery in Pfizer Global R&D, and provided leadership to a group focusing on anti-bacterials, immunology and cancer in Pfizer's Groton Labs. Mike led the research teams that discovered and developed Tarceva, a drug approved for the treatment of lung and pancreatic cancer. Mike retired from Pfizer in 2007, and is now working as an independent R&D consultant for numerous biotechnology companies seeking to improve the treatment options available to cancer patients.

Briggs Morrison, M.D.

Briggs attended Georgetown University and received a B.S. in biology. He received his M.D. degree from the University of Connecticut Medical School. While in medical school, he worked in the laboratory of Dr. George Khoury studying the mechanism of transformation by SV40 virus. He completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital and completed his fellowship in Medical Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, both in Boston. He did a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Philip Leder in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, where he studied Interleukin-4, and the cellular origin of breast cancer in transgenic mice. He subsequently worked with Dr. Lee Nadler at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, using transgenic mice as a model system for cancer vaccines. He was also a member of the Dana-Farber multi-disciplinary breast cancer clinic.

In 1995, Briggs joined the Merck Research Labs where he conducted clinical research on COX-2 inhibitors, farnesyltransferase inhibitors, and topoisomerase I inhibitors. He ran the data management organization, and then worked with the leadership of MRL to decrease drug development cycle times and re-organize the research division. He subsequently oversaw all Oncology clinical research at Merck, including the development and registration of the first histone deacetylase inhibitor, vorinostat. Briggs joined Pfizer in October 2007 and is Senior Vice President of Pfizer Inc.

Marianne Esposito, Executive Director and SAC Business Manager

Marianne's 30+ year AT&T career included operations leadership in various director positions. She is a Math/Economics BA graduate of Albertus Magnus College, MBA graduate of Hartford Graduate Center, and has a MA in Theology from Holy Apostles College. In addition, Marianne has five years of TBBCF involvement as a TBBCF full marathon walker and has been supporting TBBCF web site work since 2008.