Annual Scientific Meeting

International Speakers

Roger Li

Dr Roger Li is a urologic oncologist at Moffitt Cancer Center whose practice focuses on the treatment of bladder, upper tract urothelial and prostate cancers. Dr Li’s research interest includes the molecular characterization of urothelial malignancies as well as developing novel immunotherapeutic strategies. Dr Li’s work has been instrumental in the development of clinical trials in the BCG-unresponsive space. His research is funded by the DoD, ACS, and BCAN. He has authored over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts and serves as reviewer for many international urologic journals.

Tian Zhang

Dr. Zhang received her MD from the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology (HST) program and completed post-graduate training at Duke University, where she remained on faculty until 2021. She is currently Associate Director of Clinical Research in the Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Clinically she specializes in genitourinary malignancies and is a clinical researcher focused on improving novel therapies and biomarkers for patients with renal, prostate, and urothelial cancers. She serves as co-chair of the NCI GU Steering Committee Renal Task Force and participates on national committees for ASCO, SITC, CAHON, and KCA.

Alison Tree

Dr Alison Tree was appointed as a consultant clinical oncologist at the Royal Marsden hospital in 2014, specialising in urological malignancies. She is the GU editor for the International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology and Physics, the lead journal globally dedicated to radiation-related research. She is chair of the MR Linac Consortium Steering Committee and teaches on several ESTRO and ASTRO courses. She is Chief Investigator of the TRAP, DELINEATE, HERMES, DESTINATION 1 and 2 and PACE C trials. She is the joint lead of the Cancer Research UK Radiation Research Centre of Excellence at The ICR/Royal Marsden. Her research has received funding from Prostate Cancer UK, Cancer Research UK, the Rosetrees Trust, the JP Moulton foundation, Accuray and Elekta. Her current research interests include technical radiotherapy improvements in localised prostate cancer, oligometastatic and oligoprogressive disease.

Marniza saad

A/Prof Marniza Saad is a Clinical Oncologist at the Department of Clinical Oncology, University Malaya Medical Centre(UMMC), and an Associate Professor at Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya (UM), Kuala Lumpur. After obtaining her Medical Degree from University of Wales College of Medicine, Cardiff in 1997, she underwent specialist training in Clinical Oncology at Velindre Cancer Centre, Cardiff in the UK and attained FRCR qualification in 2006. Deeply passionate about education and training of future oncologists, she has been a trainer, programme coordinator and examiner for the Master of Clinical Oncology programme at the Universiti Malaya since 2006. Her areas of special interest include genitourinary, sarcoma, breast and gastrointestinal cancers. She is the principal investigator of numerous multi-centre clinical trials in genitourinary cancers.

Bishal gyawali

A/Prof Bishal Gyawali, MD, PhD, FASCO is a medical oncologist and an associate professor in medical oncology and public health sciences and scientist in the Division of Cancer Care and Epidemiology, in Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. He did his cancer policy fellowship at Harvard Medical School and previously served as a medical consultant for the not-for-profit Anticancer Fund, Belgium, before joining Queen’s. His clinical expertise is across multiple adult solid tumors, with special focus on GI and GU malignancies. He is in the editorial and advisory board for multiple medicine and oncology journals and has authored or co-authored more than 180 peer-reviewed articles in high-impact journals. Dr. Gyawali’s areas of academic interests include cancer policy, evidence-based oncology, financial toxicities of cancer treatment, clinical trial methods, supportive care, cancer care disparities, and global oncology. He introduced the term “cancer groundshot” and chaired a session on the same at ASCO 2022. His interviews and studies have been reported in several influential media such as CNN, NPR, Washington Post, STAT News etc. He is an expert for the WHO Drug Advisory Panel. He is a member of the WHO Essential Medicines List Committee for cancer drugs, ESMO-Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Scale and ESMO Public Policy committees. He was a member of ASCO-Health Equity and Outcomes Committee 2021-2024, and is now a member of ASCO International Affairs Committee 2024-2027. He is a graduate of ASCO Leadership Development Program, Class of 2023-2024 and co-chairs ASCO Guidelines Committee for use of G-CSF in patients with cancer. In 2023, he co-founded Common Sense Oncology, a growing movement of oncology physicians, patients, advocates, researchers, and stakeholders dedicated to working together to ensure that cancer treatments improve outcomes that matter to patients, and access to such treatments are equitable globally.

EMILY GRIST

Dr. Grist is a medical oncology clinician scientist and is a postdoctoral Prostate Cancer Foundation Young Investigator at University College London. She obtained her undergraduate medical degree and biomedical degree from the University of Southampton in 2009. Following completion of a prestigious Cancer Research UK fellowship in 2022 she obtained a PhD studying biomarkers in advanced prostate cancer. Dr. Grist has been an integral member of the STAMPEDE trial biological research group since 2017 and co-led the translational research programme STRATOSPHERE incorporating translational studies into the practice-changing STAMPEDE trial. She is aprincipal investigator of the STAMPEDE-Life translational research programme funded by Prostate Cancer UK to study the spatio-temporal evolution of lethal prostate cancer, integrated within the new STAMPEDE2 trial protocol. Her work has improved our understanding on how genomic copy number alterations associate with disease progression, this was awarded an ASCO merit award in 2021. More recently, Dr. Grist has focused on transcriptome-based re-classification of the disease, identifying novel predictive biomarkers in advanced prostate cancer, this was presented in the ESMO 2024 GU proffered paper session and awarded an ESMO merit award. Dr. Grist is committed to building precision medicine platforms for advanced prostate cancer and leading translational programmes that directly change clinical care.