Nicholas A. Saccomano, Ph.D., Chair

Nick Saccomano is currently Chief Science Officer of Bend Research located in Bend Oregon. Prior to this, Nick was a Senior Vice President at Pfizer Inc. In November of 2007, Dr. Saccomano assumed his most recent role at Pfizer to help build the newly formed Biotherapeutic and BioInnovation Research Unit.

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. from Columbia University in 1984 under the guidance of Professor Gilbert Stork.

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.

Stacey Gualtieri, CPA, Business Manager

Stacey Gualtieri is a Certified Public Accountant with her practice, Doherty, Beals, & Banks PC located in New London Connecticut. She has been a practicing CPA for twenty years with specializations in non-profit accounting and auditing, and individual and business taxation.

Ms. Gualtieri is the Treasurer for the Terri Brodeur Breast Cancer Foundation. She is responsible for getting the Foundation's application to the Internal Revenue Service for 501 (c) (3) non profit status expedited and approved within 90 days.

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.

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, went on to the Roswell Park Graduate Division, SUNY at Buffalo, and earned 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 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 recently retired from Pfizer, and is now working as the President and CEO of Oncovia Therapeutics, Inc., a biotechnology company working to improve the treatment options for pediatric and adult 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 the Head of Clinical Development.