Faculty Biographies
26 November 2024; Virtual Meeting
Nadia Harbeck, MD, PhD
Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, Germany
Prof Nadia Harbeck is director of the Breast Center and holds the chair for conservative oncology in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) Hospital, Munich, Germany. She received her medical degree from LMU, then obtained her specialist training in obstetrics and gynecology at the Technical University of Munich.
Prof Harbeck is a member of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) executive board, the ESMO director of education (2023–2025), and subject editor of the ESMO Breast Cancer Guidelines (since 2022). She is a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting educational committee (2022–2025) and a member of the expert panel issuing the German Gynecological Oncology Group (AGO) recommendations for breast cancer therapy. She is co-director of the West German Study Group. From 2009–2015, she served on the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) executive board as chair of the Translational Research Division. Prof Harbeck is principal investigator or steering committee member of numerous breast cancer trials, particularly with novel targeted compounds and individualized treatment strategies. She has a strong interest in eHealth and is a co-developer of the international digital patient diary CANKADO.
Prof Harbeck is one of the most frequently cited clinical researchers worldwide (Highly Cited Researcher 2021, 2022, 2023). She has authored more than 665 papers in peer-reviewed journals (h–index 97) and is coordinating editor in chief of Breast Care. She is the ESMO co-director of the annual EORTC-ESMO-AACR (American Association for Cancer Research) Methods in Clinical Cancer Research Workshop and a panel member of several international breast cancer consensus conferences.
Prof Harbeck is the recipient of the 2023 German Cancer Award and the 2020 ESMO Lifetime Achievement Award. She has also received several additional recognitions for her clinical and translational research, such as the 2021 UPO Award for Women in Academy and Research, the 2015 Bavarian Cancer Patient Award, the 2012 Claudia von Schilling Award, the 2008 European Breast Cancer Conference Award, the 2002 AGO Schmidt-Matthiesen Award, a 2001 AACR Award, and the 2001 ASCO Fellowship Merit Award for the highest-ranking abstract.
Antonio Llombart Cussac, MD, PhD
University Hospital Arnau de Vilanova, Valencia, Spain
Dr Antonio Llombart is a medical doctor and specialist in medical oncology. He is currently head of the Medical Oncology Service at the Arnau de Vilanova University Hospital (HUAV) in Valencia, Spain, and full professor of clinical oncology at the Catholic University of Valencia. He received his medical school training in Pamplona and Valencia, Spain, and his training in medical oncology at the University Clinic Hospital in Valencia. He completed a 4-year fellowship in the Breast Cancer Unit at Institute Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France, focusing on new drugs (phase I and phase II studies). From 1997–2005, Dr Llombart was a member of the Department of Medical Oncology at the Instituto Valenciano de Oncología. In 2003, he was promoted to the position of head of the Breast Cancer Research Unit. He obtained his PhD degree in breast cancer in 2005. From 2005 to 2010, Dr Llombart was the head of the Medical Oncology Service at the HUAV in Lleida, Spain. In 2011 he returned to the HUAV in Valencia as head of the Department of Medical Oncology and professor of clinical oncology at the Catholic University of Valencia.
With more than 5 years of academic and research training in France and the United States, Dr Llombart is an international expert in breast cancer. He has more than 100 indexed publications in the last 5 years and is involved in various breast cancer research groups. He is a founding partner and senior expert at MedSIR (Medica Scientia Innovation Research; 2012), a company dedicated to promoting high-impact clinical research in collaboration with the scientific community and pharmaceutical and biotech companies. He has served as secretary of the Spanish Society of Medical Oncology (1998–2002 and 2012–2016) and scientific coordinator (2006–2010) and past-president (2010–2014) of the SOLTI Research Group. He is a member of several scientific societies (Sociedad Española de Oncología Médica, European Society for Medical Oncology, American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Association for Cancer Research, European Cancer Organisation). Since 2017 he has been a reference academician of the Royal Academy of Medicine and Related Sciences of the Valencian Community.
Sara Tolaney, MD, MPH
Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
Dr Sara Tolaney is associate director of the Susan F. Smith Center for Women’s Cancers, director of clinical trials in the Breast Oncology Center, director of breast immunotherapy clinical research, senior physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. She received her medical degree from the University of California San Francisco. Subsequently she completed her residency in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, and fellowships in hematology and medical oncology at DFCI. She obtained her master of public health degree from Harvard School of Public Health.
Dr Tolaney’s research focuses on the development of novel therapies in the treatment of breast cancer. She is principal investigator (PI) of many therapeutic clinical trials and translational studies for breast cancer. She is the recipient of the Lee M. Nadler “Extra Mile” Award, and the Innovation Award for Clinical Faculty at DFCI.
Recently Dr Tolaney has become very involved in the development of immunotherapy in breast cancer. She was part of several of the early studies first exploring checkpoint inhibition in breast cancer and served as the national PI for the ENHANCE-1 trial, exploring eribulin and pembrolizumab in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer. She developed and conducted the first randomized trial of chemotherapy with or without checkpoint inhibition in hormone receptor (HR)-positive breast cancer, recently published in JAMA Oncology. She also has a strong interest in exploring biomarker predictors of response to immunotherapy and recently found that high tumor mutational burden was associated with benefit to checkpoint inhibition (independent of programmed death-ligand 1 status) and that phosphatase and tensin homolog alterations were associated with resistance.
Dr Tolaney’s research has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, among them The New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Lancet Oncology, JAMA Oncology, Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, and Clinical Cancer Research.
