Published July 27, 2015 This content is archived.
Physician-scientist Jeffrey S. Ross, MD ’70, discussed genomic profiling and targeted therapies for brain tumors during the inaugural Anne and Harold Brody Memorial Lecture.
The University at Buffalo’s Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences sponsored the lecture in memory of longtime chair Harold Brody, MD ’61, PhD.
Ross is the Cyrus Strong Merrill Professor and Chair of pathology and laboratory medicine at Albany Medical College, where he leads a molecular pathology laboratory.
He is the author of more than 810 peer-reviewed scientific articles and abstracts, four textbooks and numerous book chapters on pathology, molecular diagnostics, oncology and translational cancer research.
In his lecture, “Comprehensive Genomic Profiling and New Routes to Targeted Therapies in Pediatric and Adult Brain Tumors,” he discussed the results of a hybrid capture-based comprehensive genomic analysis of brain tumors occurring in children and adults.
The lecture emphasized the assessment of all classes of genomic alterations, including base substitutions, short insertions and deletions, copy number alterations and gene fusions and rearrangements. The alterations discovered were rated based on their potential to guide targeted therapies using drugs on the market and in certain late-stage clinical trials.
He shared examples of multiple clinical outcomes to demonstrate how targeted therapies can impact disease progression in primary brain tumors as well as patients with metastatic cancer involving the brain.
Brody was a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor who led UB’s Department of Anatomy for many years.
As a member of the Medical Emeritus Faculty Society, he advocated for translational research in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.