Leonard Sender joined Nantkwest in 2016 as its Senior Vice President of Medical Affairs for Pediatric, Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology. Dr. Sender also serves as Executive Director of the Pediatric, Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Breakthroughs 2020 Program for the Chan Soon-Shiong Family Foundation. Previously, Dr. Sender served as the Medical Director of the Hyundai Cancer Institute at CHOC (Children’s Hospital, Orange County). Prior to that, Dr. Sender served as the Medical Director of Clinical Oncology at the University of California’s NCI designated Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Sender collectively brings more than 25 years of experience treating pediatric, adolescent, and young adult and adult cancer patients, and has been the recipient of a $10 mm Hyundai Hope on Wheels grant to study the genomic basis of pediatric and adolescent and young adult cancers to test the hypothesis that genomic knowledge can enable clinical decisions related to treatment options. In 2010, he founded two entities critical to the development of the emerging adolescent and young adult (AYA) oncology subspecialty as President of the Society for Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology (SAYAO) and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology (JAYAO). Dr. Sender received his MD from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa and subsequently trained in pediatrics at the University of California, Irvine and in pediatric hematology-oncology at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
