Senior Member
Moffitt Cancer Center
As an evolutionary oncologist, I focus on translating agents, combinations and strategies for pediatric, adolescent and young adult sarcoma patients through clinical trials. Most importantly, I wish to develop a trial framework that allows more robust measures of perturbation of tumors and anticipates how cancers resist and evolve in response to therapies. Conceptually I think of evolutionary oncology as precision medicine over time and thus aspire to anticipate tumor adaptation to each systemic therapy I apply. I am expanding the investigation of ecological and evolutionary inspired treatment approaches through Moffitt’s novel evolutionary tumor board which I clinically co-lead with Dr. Christine Chung. As the recent leader of the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation’s Sunshine Project, I halped grow this multi-institutional network that conducts innovative trials safely across to over 25 institutions. These Sunshine Project investigator initiated trials have enrolled over 100 patients, and two of the trials have been published. We continue to develop more exciting trials across the network with innovative correlates, promising agents & schedules through nimble hybrid funding models. In the lab, I am developing and characterizing the phenotype and genotypes of osteosarcoma cell lines and co-culturing these cell lines towards an idealized intratumoral heterogeneity model, invetigating CMG helicase inhibitors, and investigating agents as a second strike-after an initial response to first line therapy.