Thoracic and GI Malignancies Branch
Information for Patients
Learn more about our clinical trials and the highly specialized care teams who lead them.
Thoracic and GI Malignancies Branch
About
The Thoracic and Gastrointestinal (GI) Malignancies Branch: 1) conducts innovative laboratory research that is focused on a better understanding of the biology of thoracic and gastrointestinal (GI) cancers; 2) directs pre-clinical studies to identify and validate novel targets for these cancers; 3) conducts clinical trials of new therapies to treat patients with thoracic and GI cancers who have failed standard treatments; 4) provides medical oncology care for patients with thoracic and GI malignancies; and 5) trains medical oncology fellows and postdoctoral researchers.
Clinical Trials
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Science
Research Interests of TGMB Members
Dr. Raffit Hassan is a medical oncologist who heads the medical thoracic oncology program. His laboratory and clinical work is focused on targeting the tumor differentiation antigen mesothelin for the treatment of malignant mesothelioma and other solid tumors.
Dr. Tim Greten is a medical oncologist whose research efforts focus on restoring anti-tumor immunity by elimination of immune suppressor functions of myeloid-derived suppressor cells, as well as activation of existing tumor-specific T cell responses in the tumor microenvironment of liver tumors and other GI cancers.
Dr. Arun Rajan is a medical oncologist whose research interests focus on developing new therapies for thoracic malignancies, especially thymic cancers; he is currently evaluating the insulin-like growth factor-1 receptor (IGF-1R) inhibitor, cixutumumab and the multikinase inhibitor sunitinib in thymomas and thymic cancers.
Dr. Porat-Shliom is a cell biologist with an aim to understand how normal and malignant cells metabolically adapt to changes in their environment. She utilizes cutting-edge light microscopy approaches including Intravital Microscopy in combination with mouse genetics.
Dr. Vassiliki Saloura is investigating the role of histone and non-histone protein methylation in tumor growth, therapy resistance and immunogenicity in squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck.
Dr. Chen Zhao is a physician-scientist focusing on tumor immunology and immunotherapy in lung cancer and thymic malignancies.
Team
Physicians & Investigators, Thoracic and GI Malignancies:
- Research Nurses, Nurse Practitioners:
- Colleen Bond, Tricia Kunst, Cara Kenney, Maureen Connolly, Rosemary Bekker, Donna Mabry, Lisa Bengtson, Arlene Berman, , Yvonne Mallory, Susan Perry, Linda Sciuto, and Maria Garcia Agra
- Patient Care Coordinators:
- Claudia Espinoza, Angelicia Garrison, and Susan Sansone
- Clinical Fellows:
- Christine Kariya, Isaac Kriley, Ornela Dervishaj, Parisa Malekzadeh, Paul Feingold, Sadia Ilyas, Winifred Lo, David Chen, Eric Groh, Gabriel Ivey, Stacey Doran, Meghan Good, Adam Cerise, Kaitlin McLoughlin, and Mohammad Jafferji
- Staff Scientists, Visiting Fellows and Biologists:
- Qun Jiang, Firouzeh Korangy, Swati Khanna, Betsy Morrow, Jingli Zhang, Tobias Eggert, Chi Ma, Qiong Fu, Tapan Maity, Abhilash Venugopalan, Elvin Hekimoglu, Julie Hong, Mahadev Rao, Vivek Shukla, Sichuan Xi, Yin Xiong, Mary Zhang, Kate Brown, Deborah Depew, Yuan Xu, Nisan Bhattacharyya, Anand Singh, Li Zhang, Yansong Bian, and Dandan Li
- Data Managers:
- Tatiana Beresnev, Yvonne Shutack, and Tania Guerrero-Amparo
- Administrative Staff:
- Lance Redding, Shane Hughes, and Cross Thompson
Training
