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Andrew J. Kaufman, MD, has been named Co-Director of the Center of Excellence for Thoracic Oncology. A specialist in minimally invasive and lung-sparing surgery, Dr. Kaufman is Director of The Thoracic Surgery Airway Program and The Asian Thoracic Surgery Program at Mount Sinai, as well as Associate Program Director for the Thoracic Surgery Residency Program. He joins Fred R. Hirsch, MD, PhD, who continues as Executive Director of the Center for Thoracic Oncology, in leading the Center of Excellence.
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Camilo Correa-Gallego, MD, has taken on the role of Co-Director of the Center of Excellence for Pancreatic Cancer. Dr. Correa is trained in complex surgical oncology with a focus on hepatopancreatobiliary surgery. He integrates minimally invasive, robotic, and traditional open techniques for a personalized patient approach. Dr. Correa joins Karyn Goodman, MD, MS, and Deirdre Cohen, MD, MS, in leading the Center of Excellence.
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Yizhou Dong, PhD, was inducted as a fellow in the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) at the organization’s annual meeting in June. The NAI Fellows program includes exceptional researchers and innovators who hold more than 63,000 U.S. patents and 13,000 licensed technologies. Dr. Dong’s laboratory focuses on drug discovery and delivery for the treatment of cancers, genetic disorders, and infectious diseases.
Fellows Book
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Anne Bowcock, PhD, is the recipient of a Mayent-Rothschild Award to support a three-month sabbatical at the Curie Institute in Paris, focused on uveal melanoma. The Mayent-Rothschild Award enables a researcher to join a research laboratory at the Curie Institute to collaborate on projects and share expertise with young scientists.
Dr. Bowcock is also Principal Investigator on a Team Science Award from the Melanoma Research Alliance for “Molecular Alterations and Therapeutics for High-risk Uveal Melanoma.” Her research team includes Jose Silva, PhD, young investigator Sai Ma, PhD, and Dr. Ma's mentor Elena Ezhkova, PhD. Building on Dr. Bowcock’s investigation of genetic changes that make some uveal melanoma (UM) tumors more dangerous than others, the team will work on developing new, effective treatments specifically for people with the high-risk form of UM.
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New Faculty - Psycho-Oncology Support | |
Bernice Yau, MD, recently joined Mount Sinai as an attending psychiatrist on the Consultation-Liaison Service, focusing on the care of oncology patients in the inpatient setting, and at the Dubin Cancer Center and Ruttenberg Treatment Center. She completed her psychiatric residency at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Consultation-Liaison fellowship at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Dr. Yau joins Mary Christopher, MD, as a provider of psycho-oncology consultation. An updated process for referring patients will be available soon. Questions can be directed to Cardinale Smith, MD, PhD. | |
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Biostatistics Enhances Research Design and Analysis
The Tisch Cancer Institute Biostatistics Shared Resource (TCI-BSR) provides critical services that enhance the integrity of design and analysis of cancer research through the expertise of biostatisticians specializing in diverse types of cancer and statistical methodologies.
Early involvement of the TCI-BSR ensures that biostatisticians have sufficient time to contribute optimal design input, to address pertinent hypotheses and perform analysis of research studies—this includes assessment of feasibility of planned analysis, implementation of programming to analyze study data, proper interpretation of analytic results, and development of novel design and analytic methods, as needed.
These services, under the leadership of Madhu Mazumdar, PhD, and Marcio Diniz, PhD, Co-Directors, can significantly increase the likelihood of successful grant awards.
While services related to protocol and grant development are available at no charge to TCI researchers, it is expected that grant budgets will include adequate FTE support for the biostatistician. The level of support—determined through discussions between the researcher and the biostatistician—should align with the scope of the work and account for any methodological development, data management and statistical programming that may be needed for the duration of the project.
Researchers are reminded to honor a four-week lead time for grant development. The first step in the process is to submit a request for services via the service request form. A biostatistician will contact the researcher within five business days to arrange a meeting. Four weeks are typically required for development of statistical plans and other needed work. The more lead time, the better.
Questions can be directed to Erin Moshier, MSc, Managing Director, TCI-BSR or Jerry Edward Chipuk, PhD, Associate Director of Basic Science Shared Resources.
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Featured Clinical Trials Open to Patient Enrollment
A Study of SNS-101 (Anti VISTA) Monotherapy and in Combination With Cemiplimab in Patients With Advanced Solid Tumors
ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT05864144
Sponsor: Sensei Biotherapeutics, Inc.
Investigator: Sofya Pintova, MD
This is a first-in-human, Phase 1/2 open-label, multi-center, dose escalation and expansion study to evaluate the safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and efficacy of SNS-101, a novel anti VISTA IgG1 monoclonal antibody as monotherapy or in combination with cemiplimab in patients with advanced solid tumors (colorectal, head and neck, melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer).
A Phase I Trial of Nicotinamide Combined With Gemcitabine/Nab-Paclitaxel Chemotherapy in Patients With Metastatic Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma
Mount Sinai Protocol Number: 23-00448
Investigator: Sofya Pintova, MD
This investigator-initiated Phase 1 trial is open to patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer who will have or have started treatment with the standard of care regimen called gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel in either first or second line of treatment.
If you have a patient you would like to be prescreened or considered for either of these trials, email the patient’s name and medical record number to TCI-immunotherapy@lists.mssm.edu and someone from the Cancer Clinical Trials Office will get back to you.
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Amir Horowitz, PhD, and colleagues
Pan-cancer profiling of tumor-infiltrating natural killer cells through transcriptional reference mapping
Nature Immunology. 2024 Jul 2. PMID: 38956379
In this study, Dr. Horowitz and colleagues generated a single-cell transcriptural reference map of human natural killer (NK) cells across healthy blood and tissues with harmonized annotations of transcriptional NK cell subsets. They identified distinct NK cell states including tumor-enriched states predictive of patient outcome. The analysis has the potential to inform more potent NK cell therapies able to resist suppressive factors within the tumor microenvironment.
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Joseph Sparano, MD, and colleagues
Clinical and genomic risk for late breast cancer recurrence and survival
NEJM Evidence. 2024 Aug 3. PMID: 39041867
Late recurrence of breast cancer more than 5 years after diagnosis and completing a typical 5-year course of adjuvant endocrine therapy accounts for more than one-half of all breast cancer recurrences. A patient-specific meta-analysis was performed that included 10,004 women with ER-positive, HER2-negative, axillary node-negative breast cancer enrolled on TAILORx and 2 other trials, now with extended follow-up beyond 10 years. The report described development and validation of the RSClin tool, and a new tool called RSClinLate, both of which integrate prognostic information provided by 21-gene recurrence score (RS) with histologic grade, tumor size, and age at surgery. The RSClin tool was again shown, now with longer follow-up, to still provide more prognostic information than clinicopathologic features alone and RS alone, and also predictive information for chemotherapy benefit. In addition, RSClinLate was shown for the first time to provide prognostic information for late recurrence more than 5 years after diagnosis. The report provides a high level of evidence supporting the use of RSClin in guiding decisions about use of adjuvant chemotherapy, and for RSClinLate providing prognostic information for late recurrence and continuing adjuvant endocrine therapy beyond 5 years.
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TCI SPARKED
A new program for high school students launched this summer: Summer Program Advancing Research Knowledge and Education for Diversity, also called TCI SPARKED. Eight students from diverse backgrounds have been participating in the program which includes mentored lab-based cancer research and promotes an inclusive cancer research workforce for the future. Program leaders are Dan Hasson, PhD; Melissa Mazor, PhD, RN; Jamilia Sly, PhD; and Layla Fattah, EdD, MPharm.
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Winn Clinical Investigator Pathway Program (Winn CIPP)
This summer The Tisch Cancer Institute welcomed four medical students from the Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials Award Program—a program designed for medical students from diverse backgrounds who are committed to increasing inclusion, equity, and diversity in clinical and translational research. The four students undertook community-based research projects over the six-week duration of the program and presented their work at a culminating event at New York University.
The students, their Mount Sinai mentors and projects:
Tyler Johnson (University of Virginia School of Medicine) and Sabrina Kubayeva (SUNY Downstate College of Medicine)
Mentors: Lina Jandorf, MA, and Alison Snow, PhD, MSW
Project: Development of an Advanced Care Planning Pilot Module for NYC Community Members
Erica Camacho (Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine) and Joshua Dawson (Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons)
Mentors: Melissa Mazor, PhD, MS, RN, and Alison Snow, PhD, MSW
Project: Evaluating the Impact of Area Deprivation on Quality-of-Life Screener Completion and Resource Strain Among NYC Oncologic Patients
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Virtual Symposium in Big Data Science
Featuring the Ma’ayan laboratory’s undergraduate trainees in the 2024 Summer Research Training Program in Biomedical Big Data Science.
August 8
10 am-12 pm
Zoom Registration
Trainees in the ten-week research program conduct cutting-edge research projects aimed at solving data-intensive biomedical problems with computational methods. The faculty-mentored projects are in the areas of data harmonization, machine learning, cloud computing, and dynamic interactive data visualization, and are applied to datasets from cancer, diabetes, and aging.
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Tisch Cancer Institute Community Outreach and Engagement Retreat
A workshop focused on collaboration between research programs and the community to reduce cancer burden and promote equity in cancer care
Monday, September 30, 11 am–2 pm
Registration
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Do you have news for the next issue of TCI Connections?
Please send to Janet.Aronson@mountsinai.org.
Remember to share breaking news and high impact news that might be appropriate for media coverage with the Press Office. This may include pending FDA drug/device approvals, studies/trial results being published in high-impact journals, and patient stories. The more lead time you can give the Press Office, the better—ideally, four weeks or when a paper is accepted by the journal. Embargoes will always be honored and news will only be released with your approval. Email the Press Office at NewsMedia@mssm.edu
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Ramon Parsons, MD, PhD, Director
Janet Aronson , Editor
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