Leadership
The PCROWD Study is run by a team of people who are both researchers and clinicians who treat patients. They are working at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, but this study is open to people across the United States. Patients will not need to travel to personally meet with the team.
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Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Chief, Division of Hematologic Malignancies
Co-Chief, Stem Cell Transplantation
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Harvard Medical School
Professor of Medicine
Robert J. Soiffer, MD
"Cancer patients are looking for answers, hope, and a breakthrough that will see them through until tomorrow. I want to be part of that...."
Irene M. Ghobrial, MD
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Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Director, Clinical Investigator Research Program
Senior Physician
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Harvard Medical School
Professor of Medicine
"We intend to lead a paradigm shift that will ultimately change the way blood cancers are diagnosed and treated. By focusing on early precursor conditions, we will have the ability to develop better targeted therapeutic agents to prevent progression or even eliminate the disease before it leads to symptoms'"
Benjamin L. Ebert, MD, PhD
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Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Chair, Medical Oncology
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Harvard Medical School
Nicola David-Pinedo Professor of Medicine
"Just in the last few years, we've [learned] pretty much all the drivers that cause cancer...Clearly, some individuals are predisposed to developing cancer – not the majority, but more than we thought initially. Probably ten to fifteen percent have some predisposition, and there are rarer individuals who have a massive predisposition so great that there's almost a guarantee that they will get a particular type of cancer."
David Steensma, MD
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Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Institute Physician, Hematologic Oncology
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Harvard Medical School
Associate Professor of Medicine
"Through PCROWD, we are attempting to understand how diseases like MDS and other ‘precursor’ conditions arise and evolve, with the hope that we can interrupt that evolution and preserve health. The ultimate goal is to prevent bone marrow stem cell DNA mutations from evolving into MDS, and MDS from evolving into AML – and to prevent comparable evolution in other disease. We’ve learned that these mutations are exceptionally common as people age; by the time they turn 70 years old, at least 15-20% of people have an MDS precursor condition called “clonal hematopoiesis”, which is also a major risk factor for heart attacks and stroke."
Allison Higgins
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Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Project Manager
Nader Shayegh
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Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Research Project Manager
Annie Cowan
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Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Clinical Research Coordinator
Rachel Styles
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Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Research Project Manager
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