Biography

Dr. Kuhn is a scientist and entrepreneur with a career long commitment in personalized medicine and individualized cancer patient care.

Dr. Kuhn is a Founder and Director of Epic Sciences and an NCI Physics Oncology Fellow. Epic Sciences is developing products as lifelong companions for cancer patients. Leveraging the fluid phase of solid tumors, Epic Sciences and the Scripps Physics Oncology Center are advancing daily the forefront of both improving healthcare effectiveness by providing drug guidance and increasing our understanding of cancer as a disease in each individual patient.

Peter has previously developed and implemented advanced technologies for structural proteomics and structure based drug design. Recently this work in collaboration with Scripps investigator Ray Stevens has led to the discovery of the structure of the human β2 Adrenergic receptor, which was one of the top ten scientific breakthroughs of Science Magazine in 2007.

Exploiting technology advantages for disruptive breakthroughs in science and medicine has been a major guidance in Peter’s career. These advances were utilized by both biotech startup companies such as Syrrx (later acquired by Takeda Pharmaceuticals) and large global companies such as Microsoft. Dr. Kuhn was on stage with Steve Ballmer at the 2007 launch of Windows Vista and Office 2007 at the NASDAQ, an event that reached over 100 Million people worldwide.

The National Cancer Institute’s signature initiative in Physics Oncology has created the Scripps Center for the discovery of the physics and mathematics of cancer metastasis. Under Dr. Kuhn’s leadership this center has setup teams with deep vertical knowledge across the disciplines of mathematics, physics, biology, pathology and oncology. The blood system is the body’s major highway system providing the nutrition to the primary cancer and providing a transport mechanism for cancer cells to migrate to distant sites. These so called circulating tumor cells are then programmed to initiate new tumor growth that eventually kills the patient. Finding and characterizing these cells early provides a new opportunity to monitor and characterize the cancer over time and tailor the treatment to the specifics of an individual’s cancer.

Dr. Kuhn is a physicist who trained initially at the Julius Maximilians Universität Würzburg, Germany, before receiving his Masters in Physics at the University of Albany, Albany, NY in 1993 and his Ph.D. in 1995. He then moved to Stanford University where he later joined the faculties of Medicine and Accelerator Physics. Since 2002 his primary appointment is with Scripps Research in La Jolla, CA.