Stavroula Baritaki Editor

Benjamin Bonavida, PhD, has been involved in the field of immunology and cancer biology for several decades and has published extensively in the fields of cancer resistance, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and various molecular approaches to circumvent the resistance of the cancer cells using sensitizing agents. Accordingly, he was the first to publish a book on tumor sensitization in 2008. More recently, Dr. Bonavida is the Series Editor of 3 series published by Elsevier/Academic Press (“Cancer Sensitizing Agents for Chemotherapy,” “Breaking Cancer Resistance to Therapeutic Antibodies,” and “Breaking Tolerance to Anti-Cancer Immunotherapy”) and several books have been published and many are in development. He has published extensively in the field of NK biology and cytotoxicity in the past, and many of these publications were in collaboration with the co-editor Dr. Anahid Jewett. Stavroula Baritaki’s, PhD, areas of expertise mainly include the understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in tumor cell therapeutic resistance and acquisition of a metastatic phenotype. Her studies have revealed novel gene products, including Raf-1 Kinase inhibitory protein (RKIP), as members of molecular ‘circuitries and networks’ that critically affect tumor immunosurveillance, resistance to chemo/immune-therapy and early metastasis-related cell transformations, such as EMT. Followed by further studies on the epigenetic and post-translational regulation of RKIP in many cancer types, her overall findings have firstly suggested the RKIP downregulation in cancer cells as a putative gene signature of tumor chemo/immune-resistance and EMT with prognostic and therapeutic significance in an individualized basis. On this context, Dr. Baritaki has extended her research interests in identifying novel agents that through RKIP induction are able to inhibit EMT or improve either the host immunosurveillance and/or the efficacy of anti-tumor therapies, especially if they are combined with conventional immuno-stimulatory or chemotherapeutic regimens. Most of these agents are currently under clinical trials.