Who We Are

Professor of Pharmacology, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois Chicago.  

Dr. Tonetti has been a breast cancer researcher for 25 years. She was trained in the laboratory of Dr. V.C. Jordan (the “father of tamoxifen”). Her lab focuses on the etiology and treatment of breast cancer, specifically on mechanisms of endocrine resistance. Her lab was the first to identify PKCα as a biomarker for tamoxifen resistance and developed preclinical xenograft models indicating PKCα is a predictive biomarker for estradiol-induced tumor regression. With Dr. Greg Thatcher, her lab developed the ShERPA, TTC-352, as a safer alternative to estradiol as characterized by a lack of uterine proliferation.

Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota; medical oncologist at HealthPartners Regions Hospital in St. Paul, MN.  

Dr. Dudek has more than 20 years’ experience in cancer clinical research, 22 years in clinical management of cancer, and 15 years in tumor biology, signal transduction, and cancer immunotherapy. His expertise is in the design and execution of clinical trials for cancer therapy with a special interest in the development of novel cancer therapeutics. He has served 16 years in leadership positions in clinical trial offices at the University of Minnesota and University of Illinois. He chairs and manages a broad range of clinical trials (phase 1 through phase 3, cooperative group, investigator-initiated, and industry-sponsored studies). He is author or co-author of more than 125 publications in peer-reviewed medical and research journals.

Hans W. Vahlteich Chair, Designer of TTC-352 therapeutic treatment & Oncology Professor at University of Arizona — Lead TTC’s Phase 1 clinical trial with TTC352 through completion.

Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, and co-leader of Translational Oncology and co-director of the NIA Predoctoral Training Program in Alzheimer’s Disease & Related Dementia, at the University of Illinois Chicago.  

Dr. Thatcher was awarded Graduate Mentor and Innovator of the Year. He completed a Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) Fellowship at Oxford University. He has over 140 scientific publications and has supervised more than 50 graduate students in chemical biology, chemical toxicology, and medicinal chemistry. His research has been continuously funded by the NIH since 2003. Dr. Thatcher founded a start-up that took an Alzheimer’s drugs into clinical trials and sold for $35 million. He has successfully translated academic drug discovery into investigational new drugs, with two new chemical entities currently in clinical trials for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer.

Klara is an accomplished medical communications specialist, pharmaceutical analyst, and medical/scientific reporter.

She has been responsible for the development of a number of high profile disease-state and branded promotional materials targeting a variety of key clinical and pharmaceutical audiences. Klara’s responsibilities as a pharmaceutical analyst and reporter have included conducting interviews with KOLs, regulatory officials, and executives, and attending oncology (eg, the American Society of Clinical Oncology), cardiology, pulmonology, and conferences to provide real-time clinical/regulatory medical information to pharmaceutical companies and investors. She has a comprehensive knowledge of the clinical profiles and marketing strategies that support multiple diverse pharmaceutical products including the following:
• XGEVA (skeletal adverse events associated with malignancy)
• Custirsen (prostate and lung cancer)
• T-VEC (melanoma)
• Crizotinib (lung cancer)
• Afatinib (lung cancer)
• Biosimilars pipeline (oncology/rheumatology)
• Ibrutinib (hematologic malignancies)
• Iniparib (breast cancer)
• Prolia (osteoporosis)

Ms. Pekarek is responsible for overseeing and supporting work performed in the lab through clinical trials, for developing budgets and managing expenses, and for ensuring compliance of all development timelines. She coordinates with TTC Oncology’s angel investor in Arizona.