Member and Vice Chair for Clinical Research
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
I currently serve as the Vice Chairman for Clinical Research within the Department of Pediatrics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK Kids). I have accumulated over 20 years of experience in early pediatric drug development for relapsed and refractory solid tumors predominantly in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP). My early translational work was focused on the clinical development of targeted agents which inhibit growth pathways and manipulate the tumor microenvironment. More recently, my research has shifted towards the clinical implementation of precision oncology and deciphering how genomics can inform individual therapy choices. I have provided broad scientific leadership for early phase clinical trial development sponsored by the NCI/CTEP, the Children’s Oncology Group (COG), as well as smaller disease-oriented consortia and pharmaceutical industry. I serve as consultant to the Pediatric Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), sit on the Steering Committee for the Pediatric NCI-MATCH (Pediatric Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice) and, most recently, serve as the COG study chair for the NCI-ComboMATCH. I have chaired, co-chaired or vice chaired 14 national phase 1/ 2 trials. I have also been involved as vice chair in the leadership of two definitive, randomized trials (AEWS1221 and AOST2032) seeking to incorporate novel targeted agents into the upfront therapy of newly diagnosed, high risk sarcoma. For the last decade, I have also made it my practice to involve young investigators in the both the pre-clinical and clinical leadership of early phase studies as a mechanism to train the next generation of translational scientists.
