Director, Center for Mechanism-Based Therapeutics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Dr. Neal Rosen is the Director of the Center for Mechanism-Based Therapeutics at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he is also a Member in the Program in Molecular Pharmacology and Chemistry and the incumbent of the Enid A. Haupt Chair in Medical Oncology.Dr. Rosen’s major interests are the identification and study of the key molecular events and growth signaling pathways responsible for the development of human cancers, and the use of this information for the development of mechanism-based therapeutic strategies. Dr. Rosen has played a leading role in the development of inhibitors of tyrosine kinase-mediated signaling and has pioneered the concept that feedback reactivation of parallel signaling pathways is a common cause of adaptive resistance to selective pathway inhibitors.
Recent work from the Rosen laboratory included the elucidation of the mechanism whereby RAF inhibitors are selectively effective in mutant BRAF tumors. These mechanistic studies predicted several of the cellular mechanisms whereby tumors develop resistance to vemurafenib and other selective RAF inhibitors. This work, in addition to other recent studies by the Rosen laboratory on the consequences of relief of negative feedback by oncoprotein inhibitors, has also led to multiple clinical trials of combination therapies at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and other cancer centers in the United States and internationally that have shown promising early results.
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 postdoctoral 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.