Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai New York, New York
Professor of Medicine and Chair, Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology Ezra M. Greenspan MD Professor of Clinical Cancer Therapeutics Deputy Director, Tisch Cancer Institute Deputy Chair, ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group Coalition of Cancer Cooperative Groups
Identifying factors that contribute to the late recurrence of breast cancer and determining if circulating tumor DNA can be used to personalize treatment decisions for patients, prevent relapse, and improve survival.
Working under the auspices of the Coalition of Cancer Cooperative Groups and ECOG-ACRIN Breast Committee, BCRF investigator, Dr. Joseph Sparano is leading efforts to advance the clinical management of breast cancer by utilizing resources collected as part of ongoing clinical trials to identify biomarkers that can better inform treatment decisions. Blood and tissue samples from breast cancer patients who take part in clinical trials are a valuable resource for researchers. They reveal details about the nature of the disease and can also be used to discover biomarkers that help inform personalize treatments and reduce side effects. Dr. Sparano oversees ongoing data analysis of samples from the Late-Relapse Repository and ECON-ACRIN trials to identify and validate markers from patient tissue and blood to improve personalized treatment approaches and outcomes for breast cancer patients.
In the coming year, he will launch a new initiative—the Tumor Evolution and escApe to Metastasis (TEaM) project—in collaboration with BCRF Investigator, Dr. Christina Curtis to better understand tumor cell and microenvironmental factors that contribute to breast cancer late recurrence. This collaboration will utilize the biospecimen resources Dr. Sparano has established through ECOG-ACRIN to better understand tumor cells and tumor microenvironmental factors that contribute to breast cancer recurrence, especially late recurrence. In another project and through the CCCG, Dr. Sparano and his colleagues will build on the results of EA1181 (COMPASS-pCR), a trial conducted to identify patients with HER2-positive breast cancer who could forego additional anthracycline and platinum and avoid their subsequent toxicities. His team will perform ctDNA analysis on existing samples from EA1181 to determine whether the presence of ctDNA prior to treatment or during HER2-directed therapy can identify those patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer who may avoid anthracycline and platinum. They will also determine whether ctDNA that persists after treatment is a predictor of increased risk of metastasis. If validated, ctDNA in this patient population could become a new tool for clinically monitoring response to neoadjuvant therapy, providing ability to optimize treatment for individual patients. Further, these results may indicate if, after completion of therapy, active surveillance of ctDNA will predict the likelihood of relapse in real time.
Dr. Joseph Sparano, MD is the Ezra Greenspan MD Professor in Clinical Cancer Therapeutics and the Chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai. He is the Deputy Director of the Tisch Cancer Institute also at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai in New York, New York. He also serves as Vice Chair of ECOG-ACRIN and Vice-Chairman of the AIDS Malignancy Consortium.
Dr. Sparano’s research has focused on developmental therapeutic approaches for breast cancer, lymphoma, and HIV-associated cancers, and therapeutic applications of genomic profiling in cancer. He is the chair of the TAILORx clinical trial in breast cancer, an NCI-sponsored trial designed that is integrating multi-parameter gene expression profiling in clinical practice (http://www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials/noteworthy-trials/tailorx).
2012
The Myra J. Biblowit Award
The Ulta Beauty Award
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