Guarionex Joel DeCastro, MD

Dr. Raza is a Professor of Medicine and Director of the MDS Center at Columbia University in New York, NY. She started her research in Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS) in 1982 and moved to Rush University, Chicago, Illinois in 1992, where she was the Charles Arthur Weaver Professor in Oncology and Director, Division of Myeloid Diseases. The MDS Program, along with a Tissue Repository containing more than 50,000 samples from MDS and acute leukemia patients was successfully relocated to the University of Massachusetts in 2004 and to Columbia University in 2010. Before moving to New York, Dr. Raza was the Chief of Hematology Oncology and the Gladys Smith Martin Professor of Oncology at the University of Massachusetts in Worcester. She has published the results of her laboratory research and clinical trials in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Blood, Cancer, Cancer Research, the British Journal of Hematology, Leukemia, and Leukemia Research. Dr. Raza serves on numerous national and international panels as a reviewer, consultant, and advisor and is the recipient of a number of awards.

Dr. Bret Taback is a nationally recognized surgical oncologist in the New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center department of surgery. Dr. Taback is a leader in the clinical management of melanoma, sarcoma and skin/soft tissue tumor surgery. Dr. Taback is the Director of the Melanoma and Sarcoma Program and Director of the Breast Surgery Fellowship. Dr. Taback received his MD degree at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston , and completed his general surgery residency at Brown University, Rhode Island Hospital. During that time he completed a Basic Science Research Fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School in Boston. Following this, he completed a fellowship in Complex Surgical Oncology at the John Wayne Cancer Institute, Santa Monica, California. Dr. Taback is a member of a number of organizations and societies including Society of Surgical Oncology, American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Association for Cancer Research. He is also a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He has published and authored numerous peer review manuscripts, abstracts and presentations, as well as book chapters over the years in notable publications such as Annals of Surgery, Annals of Surgical Oncology, Cancer Research, Clinical Cancer Research and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. He is a clinical investigator with SWOG and Alliance for clinical trials. Dr. Taback has served on numerous hospital committees including tumor boards, Institutional Review Boards, Oncology Operations Council and is the American College of Surgeon’s Commission on Cancer Physician Liaison for NYP Hospital. Most recently, Dr. Taback is a noted Castle Connolly Top Doctor.

Joshua R. Sonett MD FACS is the Edward C. and Anne K. Weiskopf Professor of Surgical Oncology (in Surgery) at CUMC, Chief of General Thoracic Surgery and Director, The Price Family Center for Comprehensive Chest Care, Lung and Esophageal Center. He is instrumental in making the Thoracic Surgery section at Columbia University Medical Center one of the best in the U.S. and he is one of the youngest professors of surgery at a major academic institution in the United States. Dr. Sonett is best known for his work on the multidisciplinary treatment of lung and esophageal malignancies. Leading work in minimally invasive treatment of lung and esophageal cancer, Dr. Sonett and his team at Columbia are innovators in the development and teaching techniques of Video Assisted Thoracic Surgery (VATS) and Minimally Invasive Esophageal (MIE) surgery, allowing surgeons to incorporate these techniques into their daily practices. Dr. Sonett and his team make up one of the few programs in the country to employ a combination of maximal chemo and radiation and surgical therapies in the treatment of locally advanced lung malignancies. He is also a leader in multi-modality therapies for lung and esophageal cancers, and a pioneer in endo-bronchial palliation of benign and malignant airway stenosis. In the clinical area of lung transplantation, Dr. Sonett is best known for developing an extended-donor lung transplant criteria protocol. Extended donor criteria (EDC) applies to the use of organs that don't meet the usual criteria for transplantation due to various health problems, but are still healthy enough for a successful transplant (Liver MD 2006). Dr. Sonett and his team have been aggressively trying to alleviate the donor shortage by evaluating lungs that may be rejected from other centers (CS News 2005). Between 2001 and 2003, 53 percent of the lungs transplanted at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia were extended donor criteria lungs, with no difference in survival between EDC lung recipients and regular lung recipients. The Columbia programs has a 95% survival rate after one year and 83% after three years, which far surpasses the national average of 79% and 62% respectively (CS Lung News 2006). Dr. Sonett has been an invited speaker and principal and co- investigator of numerous clinical trials, author of numerous publications in renown journals such as the Journal of The American College of Cardiology, Annals of Thoracic Surgery, and the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplant, among many others. Dr. Sonett received his MD from Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University Medical School, and completed his surgical residency at the University of Massachusetts, and Thoracic Fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Professional Memberships include the New York Thoracic Society, The Society of Thoracic Surgeons, Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and member of the American Association for Thoracic Surgeons Dr. Sonett has received numerous award and honors including annual awards to America's Top Doctors, Castle Connolly America's Top Doctors for Cancer, New York Magazine's Best Doctors, the Barbara Neibauer Celebration of Life Award, Foundation for Thymic Cancer and the Humanitarian Award, Chesed of New Square.