Taussig Cancer Institute, Cleveland Clinic, USA

Yogen Saunthararajah is a Professor of Medicine and Staff Physician at Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University. He graduated with distinctions from the University of Wales College of Medicine (Cardiff University), served as a Captain (Military Medicine) in the Singapore Armed Forces, and completed residencies at the University of Hawaii and his training in hematology and oncology at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. His research focuses on elucidating the molecular mechanisms by which liquid and solid cancers avoid terminal-differentiation despite high content of the master transcription factors that usually drive to these fates, and on using such understanding to develop non-cytotoxic treatments that release these intended cell-fates. This approach can cytoreduce p53-null chemorefractory cancers and simultaneously preserve normal dividing cells needed for health and life-span – good therapeutic-index. A co-focus is development of non-cytotoxic therapeutics to treat sickle cell disease, β-thalassemia and other terrible non-malignant diseases.