Immuno-Oncology – Converting Cancer to a “Chronic Disease”

Prof. Dr. Dirk Schadendorf, Professor of Dermatology, Department of Dermatology, University Hospital Essen, Germany

Dirk Schadendorf is the Director of the Department of Dermatology (since 2008) and the West German Cancer Center (WTZ) (since 2013) at the University Hospital Essen.

He attended Medical School at the University Hospital, Hamburg, and has been licensed to practice medicine since 1986. Subsequently, Prof Schadendorf went to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, USA for 2 years where he obtained post-doctoral training in Tumour Immunology by Dr. Lloyd Old starting his experimental work on melanoma. After a short period at the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics at Berlin, he started his residency in dermatology. During his 6 years at the Department of Dermatology at University Hospital Rudolf Virchow in Berlin, he received his residency training and board certification in Dermatology and Venerology (1994) to become Assistant Professor for Dermatology in 1995. After receiving the prestigious DFG- Heisenberg Scholarship, he was appointed as Head of the Skin Cancer Unit at the German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg and as Associate Professor for Dermato-Oncology at Mannheim University Hospital, Medical Faculty of the University of Heidelberg in 1997.

Professor Schadendorf has been President of the German Dermatologic Cooperative Oncology Group (DeCOG) between 2010 and 2018. He has been serving on the steering committe of the well known EORTC Melanoma Group for more than 2 decades in several roles. He is currently involved in more than 30 clinical studies. He has a strong focus on translational research with special interest in tumor immunology, therapy resistance, tumor heterogeneity and plasticity and target therapy. Prof Schadendorf has published more than 700 peer-reviewed papers ( see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Schadendorf-D) with many aspects of clinical and translational research of skin cancers in journals like New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Nature, Nature Medicine, Cell, JAMA, JAMA Oncology, Cancer Discovery, J Experimental Medicine, Lancet, Lancet Oncology or Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Maria J. Prendes, PhD, MS, Head of Oncology, Biomarker Solution Center, Labcorp Drug Development, USA

Dr. Maria Prendes leads the Biomarker Solution Center oncology therapeutic team at Labcorp Drug Development and works with clients to guide the selection, characterization and development of biomarkers for their clinical trials. Her responsibilities also include supporting companion diagnostics (CDx) development efforts.

Specializing in the fields of immuno-oncology, cancer genetics, cancer biology and molecular oncology, Dr. Prendes has more than 15 years of experience in drug development where she directed research for the identification of new clinical biomarkers in oncology as well as designed, developed and characterized antibodies against specific biomarker targets to be used as therapeutic agents and for development of CDx assays. She is the holder of multiple U.S. patents and has authored and co-authored numerous journal articles.

Dr. Ravi Karra, Senior Director Oncology, Labcorp Drug Development, Germany

Ravi Karra is Senior Medical Director in Germany. He serves as lead project physician on clients’ drug development projects, provides medical/clinical strategy for the clinical development of drugs, and serves as primary contact for disease-related medical/scientific expertise to project teams. Dr. Karra has more than 20 years of experience in patient care, clinical research, medical affairs, product launch, and product life cycle management. Before Labcorp Drug Development, he was Vice President and Global Medical Head for Rheumatology and Neurology/Pain, Grunenthal GmbH Headquarters in Aachen, Germany. He previously served as Clinical Research and Pharmacovigilance Physician for the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer in Brussels, Belgium. Dr. Karra joined Labcorp Drug Development in December 2020.