Dr. Iavarone, 40, is Professor at the Institute for Cancer Genetics, Columbia University. Dr. Iavarone received his medical degree in 1987 at the Catholic University of Rome, Italy. There, he found that cells derived from neuroblastoma, a highly malignant tumor of children, can specifically take up a new anti-cancer molecule, MIBG. In 1991, Dr. Iavarone joined the Brain Tumor Research Center of the University of California at San Francisco, where he showed that the ectopic expression of a member of the Id family, Id2, overrides a key tumor suppressor network that normally operates in all mammalian cells. Beginning in 1998, Dr. Iavarone continued his analysis of the role played by Id proteins in human cancer at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he directed the neuro-oncology research program at the Albert Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center. He recently discovered that Id2 accumulates in prognostically unfavorable neuroblastoma