HonCode

Go Back   HER2 Support Group Forums > Articles of Interest
Register Gallery FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 09-30-2013, 09:18 AM   #1
'lizbeth
Senior Member
 
'lizbeth's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Sunny San Diego
Posts: 2,214
Post Matthew J. Ellis, MD, PhD

Matthew J. Ellis, MD, PhD

Director, Breast Cancer Program
Anheuser Busch Tenured Professor of Medicine
Washington University in St. Louis
St. Louis, Missouri >>Read Profile

Reporting in April 2011, Dr. Ellis and colleagues have sequenced the whole genomes of tumors from 50 breast cancer patients and compared them to the matched DNA of the same individuals' healthy cells. This study, conducted on behalf of the American College of Surgeons Oncology Group (ACOSOG), allows researchers to find mutations that only occurred in the cancer cells. Read More

2013-2014 BCRF Project:
1) On behalf of Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, formerly American College of Surgeons Oncology Group
Co-Investigators: Cynthia Ma, MD, PhD, Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO
BCRF has provided critical support for the development of neoadjuvant endocrine therapy for women with larger estrogen receptor-positive and HER2-negative (ER+, HER2-) breast cancers. This type of breast cancer presents as a lump in the breast because mammography has failed to detect the tumor earlier because of marked mammographic density or because the growth pattern of the tumor is difficult to detect with a mammogram (lobular carcinoma). These patients were often treated with a mastectomy, however the Z1031 study, supported by BCRF, successfully demonstrated that 16 to 18 weeks of treatment with an estrogen-lowering agent can reduce the mastectomy rate by 50%. The treatment of a patient with an aromatase inhibitor before surgery has another important benefit – an ability to assess the response of each tumor to treatment. This is a critical advantage for patient management because non-responsive patients can receive more intense therapy, and highly responsive patients can be treated with endocrine therapy alone. BCRF supported a pilot study whereby patients whose tumors showed evidence of resistance to treatment because a sample taken at two weeks showed growing cells had their treatment changed to chemotherapy. Of 35 patients treated this way, only two showed signs of adequate chemotherapy responsiveness. It is therefore critical to better understand these chemotherapy and endocrine therapy resistant tumors, and Dr. Ellis’s team has been deeply analyzing samples from responding and non-responding tumors to derive deep insights into the nature of the DNA changes that drive poor outcome. These investigations have recently been published and were remarkable in startling complexity of the breast cancer genome. However, Dr. Ellis and colleagues were clearly able to identify genes that are driving outcomes and they are now seeking to further understand the data by also sequencing RNA because this will help them decide which DNA changes are likely to be causal in causing endocrine therapy resistance and therefore represent critical drug targets.
The ALNERNATE trial (“ALTernate approaches for clinical stage II or III Estrogen Receptor positive breast cancer NeoAdjuvant TrEatment in postmenopausal women”) is a phase III neoadjuvant endocrine therapy with two primary objectives. The first primary objective is to prospectively validate that the achievement of the Modified Preoperative Endocrine Prognostic Index (PEPI) score of 0 in the neo-adjuvant (prior to surgery) setting predicts success in disease free survival. The second primary objective is to determine whether the experimental neoadjuvant endocrine treatment with either fulvestrant, or the combination of fulvestrant and anastrozole, is superior to the standard neoadjuvant treatment with anastrozole. The trial has a maximum sample size of 2,820 patients with a planned enrollment period of five to six years; it is anticipated that patients will enroll at the rate of 36 per month. BCRF will provide funding for biopsy kits and measurement of Ki67, a tumor marker which measures proliferation.
2) On behalf of National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project
Co-Investigators: Samuel A. Jacobs, MD, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Pittsburgh, PA and Norman Wolmark, MD, Drexel University School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA
Technologies for unbiased discovery of the events underlying cancer are improving at a rapid pace. It is, therefore, critically important that scientists evolve their approaches to clinical investigation to match the demands and opportunities that the integrated studies of cancer DNA, RNA, and proteins - collectively referred to as ""cancer 'omics"" present.
The ready availability of tissue from patients receiving systemic treatment before surgery (neoadjuvant therapy) for breast cancer is of central importance to the 'omics field as serial sample acquisition can be reliably attempted before and after the initiation of therapy. Several National Cancer Institute Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium centers have, therefore, developed a collaboration with the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) to determine the feasibility of conducting a deep proteogenomic analysis of samples from the phase II randomized clinical trial evaluating neoadjuvant chemotherapy regimens with weekly paclitaxel or eribulin followed by doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide in women with locally advanced HER2 negative breast cancer. The long-term objective of this study is to develop standard operating procedures that will allow integrated cancer 'omics from all neoadjuvant breast cancer protocols conducted by the NSABP, and indeed, by all cooperative groups.
Bio:
Originally from the United Kingdom, Matthew Ellis completed his initial medical training in the U.K. at the Universities of Cambridge and London before coming to the United States in 1991 as a Medical Research Council of Great Britain Traveling Fellow at the Lombardi Cancer Research Center at Georgetown University. He stayed at Georgetown until 2000, at which time he was Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology.
In 2000, he became Director of the Duke University Breast Cancer Program and Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine. After 3 years with Duke University, Dr. Ellis took over as the Head of Medical Oncology at Washington University in St. Louis where he is currently a Tenured Professor of Medicine and Director of the Breast Cancer Program at Siteman Cancer Center.
Dr. Ellis's research interests include the identification of genes that affect responses and resistance to endocrine therapy in breast cancer patients. Dr. Ellis is co-principal investigator for the NCI-funded Proteome Characterization Center and co-project leader for The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Breast Project.
'lizbeth is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is On

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 07:13 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Copyright HER2 Support Group 2007 - 2021
free webpage hit counter