Research Abstract
I am a Pediatric Hematologist-Oncologist at Dana-Farber / Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center with clinical and research expertise in precision cancer medicine and solid tumors, particularly sarcomas. The focus of my research is the genomics of pediatric solid tumors including expanding the benefits of the precision cancer medicine approach to children with these cancers and a poor prognosis. In addition, I perform clinical trials of new therapies for pediatric sarcomas. My prior work has defined the genomic underpinnings of osteosarcoma and gastrointestinal stromal tumor, determined that non-standard personalized medicine tests are commonly marketed to cancer patients as being beneficial, established that a multi-institutional precision medicine study is feasible and demonstrated that a significant proportion of children with difficult to treat childhood solid tumors have genomic results with potential clinical benefit. I am the lead pediatric investigator for a comprehensive somatic genotyping study, profile, which has enrolled and sequenced tumor from over 400 pediatric patients. In terms of clinical trials for sarcoma, I am Vice Chair of the Bone Tumor Committee of the Children’s Oncology Group (COG), the principal North American pediatric oncology clinical trials consortium. I am the Study Chair of COG protocol “AOST1321, a phase II study of Denosumab in Recurrent Osteosarcoma” and the institutional PI of 5 phase II, phase III and biology protocols for bone sarcomas and GIST.