Current Research

מחקר

Whereas the list of anti-neoplastic treatments is constantly growing across the cancer spectrum, currently there are only a few predictive biomarkers of response to treatment to any of these agents, and clinical decisions are generally empirical and based on 'trial and error'. As a clinician-investigator, I am interested in finding associations between lab variables/plasma biomarkers/cell surface biomarkers and response to anti-neoplastic treatment in solid malignancies. We showed that the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio is associated with response to chemotherapy treatment in bladder cancer, and that a high lymphocyte count is associated with pathological complete response at cystectomy following neo-adjuvant treatment. As first author in J Transl Med, I described the patterns of change of several plasma biomarkers following treatment with the biological agent cabozantinib in prostate cancer. As a PI, my group recently showed that TNFSF4 is associated with outcome in metastatic melanoma, and found networks of co-regulated checkpoint genes in bladder cancer. These works, taken together, show that the adaptive arm of the immune response is imperative in amounting response to both chemo and immuno-therapy.

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