Dr. Neal Rosen

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, USA

Dr. Neal Rosen, Enid A. Haupt Chair in Medical Oncology, is a Member of both the Department of Medicine and the Program in Molecular Pharmacology and Chemistry at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He is also a Professor of Pharmacology, Cell Biology and Medicine at the Cornell University Medical School.

His major interests are the identification and study of the key molecular events and growth signaling pathways responsible for the development of prostate, breast, melanoma and other human cancers, and the use of this information for the development of mechanism-based therapeutic strategies. He has played an important role in the development of inhibitors of tyrosine kinase-mediated signaling and has pioneered the concept that cancer cells are dependent on cellular machinery for protein folding.

In the course of this work his laboratory has developed inhibitors of the Hsp90 protein chaperone and validated their anticancer activity in animal models and clinical trials. This work led to the founding of Conforma Therapeutics. Currently his laboratory work focuses on using pharmacologic and genetic approaches to develop a detailed understanding of feedback and cross-talk among oncogene-activated pathways in order to develop rational strategies for combination therapy. Recent work from the Rosen laboratory on ERK, mutant BRAF and PI3K/AKT signaling, the implications of the kinetics of pathway inhibition, and the consequences of relief of negative feedback by oncoprotein inhibitors has led to multiple clinical trials at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and other cancer centres in the United States and internationally.

Dr. Rosen received his undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Columbia College and an MD, PhD in Molecular Biology from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and post-doctoral training and a fellowship in Medical Oncology at the National Cancer Institute. He was on the senior staff of the Medicine Branch at the NCI prior to joining the faculty of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.