Description of Research Expertise

Marcia S. Brose MD PhD is an Associate Professor at the University Of Pennsylvania School Of Medicine, in the Departments of Otorhinolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery, and Medicine, division of Hematology/Oncology. Over the past 8 years she has been the Director of the Thyroid Cancer Therapeutics Program. In 2015 she was appointed the Director of the Center for Rare Cancers and Personalized Therapy for the Abramson Cancer Center.

Dr. Brose received her Medical Degree from Cornell University Medical College in 1995, and her PhD in Genetics in 1994 from the Rockefeller University in New York City. She completed her specialty training in Internal Medicine, and Hematology and Oncology, and postdoctoral work in cancer genetics at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Brose’s current research interest includes the identification of novel treatments for advanced thyroid cancer and solid tumors with rare genetic changes. She runs a clinical research unit and a laboratory aimed at identifying new therapeutic targets for solid tumors through genetic and molecular studies of tumor tissue. She started and currently runs the program for thyroid cancer therapeutics at the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania. As the recently appointed the inaugural Director of the Center for Rare Cancers and Personalized Therapy, she aims to bring the advances of new treatments recently approved for more common cancers to patients that have more rare diseases. Using the identification of genetic signatures she aims to match candidates to new targeted agents. She is currently the PI of several active clinical phase I-III clinical trials.

Dr. Brose is widely regarded as a pioneer of the new fields of Thyroid Cancer Oncology and Personalized Cancer Care. Prior to her work, there were no treatments for patients who had advanced disease. She is the global co-PI of DECISION, the pivotal international multi-institutional Phase III trial of sorafenib for patients with iodine refractory differentiated thyroid cancer which work was recognized with a plenary lecture to the American Society of Clinical Oncology in 2013 (with over 21,000 in attendance and widely reviewed online). The study was published in The Lancet and lead to the first FDA approved agent in this indication. She is also the PI of the international multicenter phase II study of vemurafenib in patients with RAI refractory papillary thyroid cancer that harbors the BRAFV600E mutations which is the first non-VEGF receptor TKI to show activity in this disease which was recently published in Lancet Oncology. She is a Co-Investigator and author of the pivotal phase III trials EXAM (cabozantinib in medullary thyroid cancer) and SELECT (lenvatinib in differentiated thyroid cancer) which were published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and New England Journal of Medicine and both of which led to FDA approvals for Medullary and RAI refractory Differentiated Thyroid Cancer. She is an internationally recognized leader of the field of thyroid cancer oncology, and has been invited to lecture and teach physicians in the US, Europe, Asia, Central and South America on the emerging treatments for advanced thyroid cancers.

Her laboratory, which focuses on the correlative aspects of clinical trials has been a leader in identifying genetic markers of responses in clinical trials (Yarchoan et al 2016, and Brose et al, 2016).
She sees patients from across the US and Canada and abroad and regularly is invited to grand rounds to educate surgeons, endocrinologists and oncologists on how to incorporate the new systemic treatments for advanced thyroid cancer.

In summary, Dr. Brose’s research has led to new hope for patients with advanced thyroid cancer. Her work has laid the foundation for successful treatment approaches that are not only extending progression free survival, but overall survival as well.

Description of Clinical Expertise

Treatment of Thyroid Cancer, PhaseI/II/III clinical trials, novel drug target discovery, and use of genetic testing in diagnosis, prognostication and prediction of resopnse to the treatment of cancer. Treatment of Rare Cancers of the Head and Neck.

Description of Other Expertise

Dr. Brose regularly instructs and mentors medical students,Internal Medicine and Head and Neck Surgerical residents, fellows (Hematology/Oncology, and Head and Neck Surgery) and post-doctoral PhD fellows who rotate through her lab in Hematology/Oncology and Cell genetics