Attending Pathologist
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Cristina R. Antonescu, MD is an Attending Pathologist at MSKCC, and oversees the pathologic evaluation of all patients with sarcoma treated at her institution. She is the co-leader of a research project as well as the Director of the Biospecimen Repository Core for the Soft Tissue Sarcoma SPORE. In 2004, as a result of a KO8 award from the American Cancer Society, Dr. Antonescu started her own sarcoma research laboratory, dedicated to the detection and molecular characterization of diagnostic and prognostic markers in soft tissue sarcomas. Reflecting her prior training in molecular biology, her research has been focused on three areas: (1) KIT oncogenic signaling in the pathogenesis of GIST and the mechanisms of drug resistance to targeted kinase inhibitor therapies; (2) oncogenic signaling in angiosarcoma, with the characterization of KDR (VEGFR2) activating mutations in breast angiosarcoma and MYC/FLT4 gene amplifications in radiation-associated angiosarcoma; and (3) fusion gene discovery and fusion transcript characterization in diagnosis and prognosis of soft tissue tumors. In the past 5 years, Dr. Antonescu's lab has discovered a significant number of novel translocations, including NAB2-STAT6 in solitary fibrous tumor, YAP1-TFE3 and WWTR1-CAMTA1 in epithelioid hemangioendothelioma, miR143-NOTCH in malignant glomus tumors, VGLL2-related fusions in congenital spindle cell rhabdomyosarcoma.
