H. Bryan Neel III, MD, PhD Distinguished Research Lecture

Maie A. St. John, MD, PhD

Sunday, October 12, 11:00 am

Precision Surgery: The Next Frontier for Our Patients

Maie A. St. John, MD, PhD, is professor and chair of the Department of Head and Neck Surgery and professor of Head and Neck Surgery and Bioengineering at UCLA, and holds the Thomas C. Calcaterra, MD, chair in Head and Neck Surgery. She is co-director of the Head and Neck Cancer Program, and associate director of Cancer Research and Education at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. She received her Bachelor of Science from Stanford, a medical degree and doctorate from Yale, and completed residency and postdoctoral training at UCLA.

Dr. St. John’s clinical expertise is in intraoperative tumor margin delineation in the resection of head and neck cancers to allow for precision surgery. Her work has led to clinical trials and patent applications and has been consistently funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), charitable foundations, and industry. She is a prolific author and a sought-after lecturer internationally.

“My grandfather was my initial mentor,” Dr. St. John explained in a recent Voices of Otolaryngology podcast. “He was a small-town physician in Egypt, and I would spend my summers there [with him]. He would carry me on his shoulders…as he saw patients,” shared Dr. St. John. One afternoon she watched as her grandfather saw a patient with a very large growth on her face. Asking what it was, her grandfather explained, “That is cancer.” From that age, about five or six, Dr. St. John knew that she wanted to help treat and care for patients with cancer.

Today, Dr. St. John studies the mechanisms of tumor progression, incorporating the results of her laboratory’s research into the development of novel therapeutics. She is an outstanding educator who has provided mentorship to numerous trainees and serves as a member of several prestigious organizations including the Executive Council of the American Head and Neck Society, the American Board of Otolaryngology, and NIH study sections. She has been the recipient of multiple awards for teaching and research.

About the Lecture

Funded by the Neel family and friends, the H. Bryan Neel III, MD, PhD Distinguished Research Lecture was established in 1993 to disseminate information regarding new developments in biomedical science to the otolaryngologic community.

Learning Objectives:

• Gain new approaches to tapping into gaps in care brought forth by our patients.
• Learn principles for collaboration as the key to shaping future care.
• Find strength and purpose in working in the unknown.