Faculty Biographies

Prof Nadia Harbeck is head of the Breast Center and holds the chair for conservative oncology at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, following a post as head of the Breast Center at the University of Cologne from 2009 to 2011. After gaining her medical degree in 1989, she received her specialist training in obstetrics and gynecology at the Technical University of Munich, where she then worked as an associate professor and head of conservative senology until 2009.

Prof Harbeck is a member of the expert panel issuing the yearly updated evidence-based German Gynecological Oncology Working Group guidelines for breast cancer therapy and co-director of the West German Study Group. From 2009 to 2015, she served as an executive board member of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) and as chair of the EORTC translational research division. She is principal investigator or steering committee member of numerous national and international clinical breast cancer trials focusing on novel targeted compounds. Her translational research centers on prognostic and predictive factors in breast cancer and other solid tumors. She also has a strong interest in eHealth and is a co-developer of the digital patient diary CANKADO.

For her clinical translational research, Prof Harbeck has received numerous awards, including the 2015 Bavarian Cancer Patient Award, the 2012 Claudia von Schilling Award, the 2002 AGO Schmidt-Matthiesen Award, a 2001 American Association for Cancer Research Award, and the 2001 American Society of Clinical Oncology Fellowship Merit Award for the highest-ranking abstract submitted.

Prof Harbeck is the author of more than 430 papers in peer-reviewed journals and is coordinating editor-in-chief of Breast Care. She is a panel member of several International Consensus Conferences such as Breast Cancer in Young Women (BCY), Advanced Breast Cancer (ABC), and the St Gallen Meeting for Early Breast Cancer.

Dr Giuseppe Curigliano is a full professor of medical oncology at the University of Milan and chief of the Clinical Division of Early Drug Development at the European Institute of Oncology, Italy. He received his MD from Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Gemelli University Hospital, in Rome, and his PhD from the University of Pisa.

Dr Curigliano is an expert in the field of advanced drug development in solid tumors, with specific interest in breast cancer. He contributed to the development of many anticancer therapies that are now standard of care in the treatment of multiple solid tumors. Since 2001, he has been a tenure-track and full-time cancer specialist at the European Institute of Oncology, one of the world’s leading cancer research institutes and the premier cancer center in Italy, third in Europe, and 12th globally.

Dr Curigliano serves as a member of the Italian Higher Health Council and as chair of the Clinical Practice Guidelines Committee for the European Society for Medical Oncology. He was awarded the first European School of Oncology Umberto Veronesi Memorial Award in Vienna in 2017, and in the same year, a Fellowship of the European Academy of Cancer Sciences in Paris. In 2022, he was identified as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate. Dr Curigliano has contributed to over 670 peer-reviewed publications.

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.

Prof Anna Sophie Berghoff is head of the central nervous system tumor program and the translational research unit at the Division of Oncology, Medical University of Vienna, Austria. She completed her MD and her PhD in clinical neuroscience at the Medical University of Vienna, with a special focus on clinical and pathologic prognostic factors in brain metastases. Subsequently, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg.

Prof Berghoff is head of the personalized immunotherapy laboratory and focuses on inflammation in primary and secondary brain tumors.

Prof Berghoff is author or co-author of over 200 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, and she has given many talks and presentations at international and national scientific meetings. She is a member of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer, the Austrian Society of Hematology and Oncology, the Austrian Society of Neuropathology, and the European Society for Medical Oncology, where she serves as member of the Women for Oncology Committee. She is also a board member for the European Association of Neuro-Oncology and Austrian Society of Neuro-Oncology, and she serves as deputy editor in chief for ESMO Open and editorial board member for British Journal of Cancer.