Dr. Keith Crawford

Dr. Keith Crawford

Director of Clinical Trials and Patient Education

Director of Clinical Trials and Patient Education

PHEN

Dr. Keith Crawford joined PHEN in 2019.  As Director of Clinical Trials and Patient Education, he is responsible for implementing programs in these areas as well as working with patients and PHEN partners.

Dr. Crawford has more than 20 years of experience in the Life Sciences and completed his graduate and post-graduate training at Harvard Medical School where he developed competencies in the area of genomics, proteomics, immunology, microbiology, infectious diseases, and regenerative medicine.

During his post-doctoral training, Keith was selected by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as a Harold Amos Fellow. His work in the field of immunology caught the eye of the Department of Defense where he received funding to develop antidotes for chemical and biological weapons exposure as well as create a high throughput platform for the detection of biological weapons and emerging infectious agents.

After completing this directive, Dr. Crawford became the Director of the Center for Molecular Orthopedics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He was responsible for leading research efforts at the center, which gave rise to the discovery of a novel population of early lineage adult stem cells.  Dr. Crawford and his colleagues were responsible for the preclinical studies, which laid the foundation for a spinal fusion therapeutic. 

Dr. Crawford is a graduate of Prairie View University, the University of Texas Medical School in Houston (Medical Doctorate), and Harvard University (Doctor Philosophy) where he studied cell biology and immunology.

Mr. Thomas A. Farrington

Mr. Thomas A. Farrington

President and Founder

President and Founder

PHEN

Thomas Farrington founded the Prostate Health Education Network (PHEN) in 2003 after receiving treatment for prostate cancer in 2000 and publishing his first book Battling The Killer Within in 2001. Under Mr. Farrington’s leadership, PHEN is recognized as the leading prostate cancer education and advocacy organization with national programs and initiatives focused on the needs of African Americans.

A key foundation for PHEN’s success is its national network of prostate cancer survivors and their loved ones who support the organization’s efforts within their communities. PHEN partners with hundreds of churches across the nation to bring education and awareness programs into their communities and recruit local prostate cancer medical specialists as educators for these events.

PHEN also makes extensive use of online programming to reach and support individual educational needs. Mr. Farrington’s background is in Information Technology.  Farrington currently serves as a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network’s (NCCN) Prostate Cancer Treatment Guidelines Panel and the NCCN Prostate Cancer Early Detection Guidelines Panel. He serves as a trustee of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and as an advisor to a number of other healthcare organizations and programs. Mr. Farrington received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 1966.

David Vasir, PhD

David Vasir, PhD

Senior Research Analyst

Senior Research Analyst

PHEN

David Vasir, PhD, a Senior Research Analyst at PHEN, earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland, U.K., in 1981 and his Master of Science degree from the University of Wales College of Medicine in Wales, U.K., in 1985. He then went on to earn his Doctor of Philosophy at Jesus College and Oxford University Medical School in 1991. 

Dr. Vasir has been an investigator on several cancer vaccine programs where he designed and implemented a number of immunological based assays to monitor the pre-vaccination and post-vaccination immunological status of patients with breast, renal ovarian carcinomas, and patients with multiple myeloma in cancer vaccine clinical trials. The majority of these analyses pertained to a detailed pre-vaccination and post-vaccination analysis of the immune system as determined by Th1 and Th2 immune responses, levels, and functions of regulatory T cells as determined by surface markers, FOXP3 expression, and specific and non-specific immunological analysis.  

In addition, Dr. Vasir has extensively studied ex-vivo the immunobiology of antigen induced regulatory T cells from their phenotypic characteristics using six color flow cytometry analysis, their in vitro functional properties, their interaction with antigen presenting cells, detailed Th1 and Th2 cytokine profiles of segregated populations of regulatory T cells using multiplex arrays, and use of various strategies to reverse the suppressive properties of these cells. 

 Dr. Vasir also investigated the identification of specific microRNAs and kinases in six color sorted regulatory T cells isolated from the ascites of patients with advanced ovarian cancer, identifying and targeting cancer stem cells using small molecules, isolation, and characterization of stem cells for regenerative medicine.