Dr. Alice Shaw
Center for Thoracic Cancers at Massachusetts General Hospital
Her patients call her a super hero and a rock star, but, in real life, Dr. Alice Shaw is an attending physician in the Center for Thoracic Cancers at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
In addition to caring for patients with lung cancer, Dr. Shaw also performs clinical and translational research.
Some of her most recent research involves why some patients become resistant to treatments and what new treatment strategies are available that overcome this resistance.
ALK
Dr. Shaw's major research interests include studying anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) and ROS1 rearrangements in non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC).
She is also studying how lung cancers develop resistance to targeted therapies, and this work has led to a number of novel treatment strategies to overcome resistance in the clinic.
ROS1
One of the newest discoveries in the field of targeted therapies for lung cancer is involved with treatments for lung cancer patients who are positive for the ROS1 biomarker.
Patients with ROS1 respond well to some of the same treatments as are used for ALK-positive lung cancer patients. So, even though ROS1 is found in a relatively small percentage of lung cancer patients, it is critical to be tested for this biomarker, since patients with ROS1 have some really good options for treatment.