Our Team

Duke University’s Comparative Oncology Group and Collaborators

Executive Director: William Eward, DVM, MD

Having spent his childhood in the company of a wide variety of animals, Dr. Eward fulfilled a lifelong dream of becoming a small animal veterinarian in 2000 when he graduated from Auburn University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. He was particularly captivated by his patients with cancer and decided to pursue this interest further. In 2002, he returned to school, receiving an MD degree from the University of Vermont. He currently is on faculty at Duke University with an adjunct appointment at the North Carolina State College of Veterinary Medicine. He spends the first part of the week taking care of humans with cancer and the latter part of the week taking care of animals with cancer. As an Orthopaedic Oncologist, he specializes in preserving and reconstructing limbs that have been jeopardized by a type of cancer called Sarcoma. Given his dual roles in human and animal health, Dr. Eward is committed to using a One Medicine approach to solving the terrible problem that cancer presents to all of us, whether we walk on two legs or four. He runs a lab at Duke that attempts to identify common elements between types of cancer across different species.

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Assistant Director: Suzanne Bartholf DeWitt, DVM, PhD

Suzanne grew up on a sheep farm in the Catskill Mountains of NY. She received her BS degree in Biology from Yale University and her DVM degree from NC State’s College of Veterinary Medicine. She practiced as a small-animal clinical veterinarian for a few years before deciding to pursue a PhD at Duke University in the Department of Pathology, studying the effects of mutation of a gene, ATRX, on the biology of osteosarcomas. Suzanne completed this PhD as well as a post-doc fellowship at Duke, working to develop mouse research models for investigating the role of p38 signaling in prostate cancer drug resistance and metastasis. Continuing to blend her interests in veterinary medicine and research, Suzanne is now pursuing a residency in Veterinary Anatomic Pathology in the Department of Pathology/Comparative Medicine at the Wake Forest School of Medicine.

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Director of Research: Jason Somarelli, PhD

Jason Somarelli is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at Duke University. His research investigates mechanisms of cancer therapy resistance and metastasis through the lens of comparative evolutionary and ecological paradigms. Dr. Somarelli is a member of the executive steering committee for the AACR Cancer and Evolution Working Group, an advisory board member for the Triangle Center for Evolutionary Medicine, and an advisory board member of the Exotic Species Cancer Research Alliance. He also directs the Duke Marine Lab Scholars in Marine Medicine Program and is actively involved in education and outreach to enhance diversity and equity in science.