Sonia Kupfer, MD, has been named the Sara and Harold Lincoln Thompson Professor.
Dr. Kupfer is a physician-scientist in gastroenterology with a focus on diagnosing and treating patients with genetic disorders such as hereditary gastrointestinal cancer syndromes and celiac disease. She serves as director of the Center for Clinical Genetics and Genomics and the GI Cancer Risk and Prevention clinic for UChicago Medicine.
Her independent NIH-funded translational research program studies genetics and genomics of GI cancers with a focus on host-environment interactions and inherited predisposition across heterogeneous populations. She has leadership roles in several national and international research consortia on GI cancers.
As an educator and mentor, she is the inaugural director of the Community for Advancement of Physician-Scientists for the Biological Sciences Division and the Pritzker School of Medicine. She co-directs the T32 training program in digestive diseases and the TL1 training program in the Institute for Translational Medicine.
Dr. Kupfer is a recognized expert in the field with national and international leadership positions as well as service as an associate editor of Gastroenterology. She has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and has received the American
Gastroenterological Association Young Investigator award and the Biological Sciences Division Distinguished Leader in Diversity and Inclusion award.
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Peter O’Donnell, MD, has been named the Fred C. Buffett Professor.
Dr. O’Donnell is chair of the Committee on Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacogenomics, and program director of the institutional NIH T32 fellowship training program in clinical pharmacology. He is deputy director of the Center for Personalized Therapeutics. As a practicing oncologist, he specializes in the treatment of genitourinary malignancies, with a particular expertise in bladder cancer. His research focuses on facilitating and understanding the delivery and adoption of germline genetic markers that predict drug response (pharmacogenomics).
Nationally, he is chair of the Pharmacogenomics and Population Pharmacology Committee of The Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, where he oversees a large portfolio of pharmacogenomic and clinical pharmacology studies.
Dr. O’Donnell has served as institutional principal investigator for numerous therapeutic clinical trials in bladder cancer including studies that led to the FDA approval of five new therapies for bladder cancer within the past decade. Dr. O’Donnell has discovered and validated research tools and findings to pioneer the implementation of preemptive pharmacogenomic testing and delivery of interpretive pharmacogenomic results. His discoveries in this field of applying precision medicine genomic strategies have shaped and advanced the adoption of genomics-informed prescribing.
Dr. O'Donnell has been recognized for outstanding contributions to research and education through awards from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, American Association for Cancer Research and the Academy of Distinguished Medical Educators at UChicago.
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Russell Szmulewitz, MD, has been named the first Rodin Family Professor in the Wallman Society of Fellows.
Dr. Szmulewitz serves as associate director for clinical investigation at the UChicago Comprehensive Cancer Center, where he also serves as the leader of the genitourinary oncology multidisciplinary disease team. In addition, he is co-founder and co-director of the High Risk and Advanced Prostate Cancer Clinic. Dr. Szmulewitz is an expert in the treatment of genitourinary malignancies and is a world leader in the management of patients with advanced prostate cancer.
Dr. Szmulewitz is particularly involved in therapeutic development for prostate cancer. He is a funded investigator within the Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium of the Department of Defense and contributor to national and international guidelines for prostate cancer clinical research. He has led numerous clinical trials in prostate cancer, with particular focus on next generation hormonal therapeutics and treatments for hormonal therapy resistance.
His translational research focuses on the evolution to therapy resistance in prostate cancer, with the goal of developing targeted therapies for acquired and de novo hormonal therapy resistance. In addition, his laboratory is partnering with other laboratories to develop novel prostate cancer treatment strategies including targeting lineage plasticity, theranostics and replicative stress.