My clinical and research interests are in experimental therapeutics, with a focus on malignant diseases of the chest. These include lung cancer, mesothelioma, and rarer mediastinal tumors. In general, both small cell and non-small cell lung cancers are difficult to diagnose at an early stage; once advanced, they are highly lethal malignancies. Standard chemotherapy offers palliative benefit, but only limited survival benefit for lung cancer patients.

Novel targets for therapeutic design, including targets in signal transduction pathways and in pathways conferring drug resistance, are being identified. We are designing trials using new chemotherapy agents and small molecules that are able to inhibit more selectively the activity of these targets, thus providing more potent anticancer activity with less normal tissue toxicity.

Appropriate targets in an individual lung cancer patient's tumor may be able to be defined using molecular biologic assays of tumor tissue, therefore allowing more finely tuned therapy for that individual.