Dr. Garth Powis, D.Phil., is Director of the Sanford Burnham Presbyterian Medical Research Institute Cancer Center in La Jolla, CA. Prior to becoming the Director in May of 2013, Dr. Powis was the Chair of Experimental Therapeutics, and Director of the Center for Targeted Therapy at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, and prior to that, Director for Basic Research at the University of Arizona Cancer Center. Dr. Powis obtained an undergraduate degree in medical biochemistry from Birmingham University, UK and his D.Phil. degree in biochemistry and pharmacology from the University of Oxford in the UK. His first position upon moving to the US was as a tenured professor in the Division of Developmental Cancer Research at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota studying the mechanism of action and metabolism of novel anticancer drugs.
Dr. Powis is a molecular pharmacologist well known for his discovery and validation of novel cancer targets, and using them to develop small molecule inhibitors for cancer therapy. He has cofounded two cancer drug development pharmaceutical companies, authored of more than 350 publications, serves on six cancer center external advisory boards and is on the editorial board of six research journals.