Dr. Malcolm Pike, Advisor

Professor, Keck School of Medicine, Univ. of Southern California

Malcolm Pike is the Flora L. Thornton Professor of Preventive Medicine at Keck School of Medicine. He received his B.S. in Mathematics from Witwatersrand University, South Africa, and his PhD in Mathematical Statistics from Aberdeen University, UK.  

Dr. Pike's main research interest is the chemoprevention of female cancers by a hormonal contraceptive approach. He also has major interests in the effects of hormone replacement therapy on breast and endometrial cancer, and in the effects of diet on female cancer risk.  

He has authored more than 350 scientific papers on various aspects of cancer epidemiology and is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science.  

His honors include the 1968 Guy Medal (Bronze) of Royal Statistical Society, the 1994 Brinker International Award of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, and the 1996 USC Associates Award for Creativity in Research.

Dr. John Reed, Advisor

President and CEO, The Burnham Institute

John Reed earned his M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1986, where he also received his clinical and postdoctoral training. In 1989  He was appointed Assistant Professor, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and Assistant Director, Laboratory of Molecular Diagnosis at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. 

Dr. Reed was recruited to The Burnham Institute in 1992. He founded the Institute's Program on Apoptosis and Cell Death Research and served as its director until 2000. Dr. Reed served as the Institute's Scientific Director from 1995 to 2001 and was appointed President and CEO on January 1, 2002. 

He is the author of more than 450 scientific papers and has published more articles on apoptosis and cell death in the past six years than any other scientist worldwide. From 1996 to 1998, 

Dr. Reed was ranked first among biomedical researchers worldwide for the impact of his research. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, and serves on the editorial boards of numerous scientific journals.

Dr. Dimitrios Trichopoulos, Advisor

Prof. of Cancer Prevention, Harvard School of Public Health

Dimitrios Trichopoulos is the Vincent L. Gregory Professor of Cancer Prevention and the former chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health.  In addition to his position at Harvard, he is also a professor at the University of Athens Medical School, where he received his M.D. in 1963. 

Over the past several decades Dr. Trichopoulos has made many pioneering contributions to understanding the role of reproductive factors in the etiology of breast cancer.  His main current research interest is the evaluation of the hypothesis that steroid hormone-dependent cancers have their origin in the intrauterine life, a theory that he expounded in a seminal paper in The Lancet medical journal in 1990. This hypothesis is compatible with experimental evidence and helps to explain why it takes more than two generations for the incidence of breast and prostate cancer in Asian immigrants to the U.S. to reach the four-times higher incidence prevailing in the host population. Dr. Trichopoulos has also researched the significance of the traditional Mediterranean diet in reducing the risks of cancer. 

He has received many professional honors, including the prestigious Brinker International Award in December 2000 from the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation for his research on factors contributing to the development of breast cancer. 

Dr. Trichopolous is the author or co-author of more than 450 scientific articles.

Richard G. Stevens, Co-Writer

Cancer Epidemiologist, University of Connecticut Health Center

Richard Stevens is a cancer epidemiologist who is well known in the cancer research community. As a respected researcher who speaks their language, he has access to top experts in each of the scientific issues to be covered in the program.  He himself has also made widely cited scientific contributions to understanding breast cancer.

Stevens has a B.S. in Genetics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the University of Washington in Seattle.  His working life has been devoted trying to help figure out why people get cancer.  One of his major interests has been in the possible role of iron overload.  Largely on the basis of his work, published in the Journal of National Cancer Institute and the New England Journal of Medicine, the Swedish food industry decided to cease iron fortification of flour in the early 1990s.

A perplexing challenge, which Stevens began to engage in the late 1970s, is the confounding mystery of why breast cancer risk rises so dramatically as societies industrialize.  He proposed in 1987 a radical new theory that use of electric lighting, resulting in lighted nights, might produce “circadian disruption” causing changes in the hormones relevant to breast cancer risk. Accumulating evidence has generally supported the idea, and it has received wide scientific and public attention.  For example, his work has been featured on the covers of the popular weekly Science News (October 17, 1998) and the scientific journal Cancer Research (July 15, 1996) as well as cited in the October 16, 2000, cover story of US News & World Report, “Sleepless in America” by Susan Brink, and the May 2001 Reader’s Digest.