Dr. Levi Garraway has made seminal research contributions in cancer genomics, drug resistance, and genomics-driven (or “personalized”) cancer medicine. He published the first genome sequencing studies of aggressive primary prostate cancer, and has led other major sequencing initiatives in prostate cancer, melanoma and head/neck cancers. This work identified multiple new cancer genes and uncovered mechanisms by which complex rearrangements arise. At the Broad Institute, he leads the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia, a collaboration with Novartis that involves a genomic and pharmacological study of ~1000 human cancer cell lines to characterize sensitivity and resistance to anticancer agents.

Dr. Garraway is perhaps best known for his contributions to precision cancer medicine. He described the first high-throughput adaptation of a genomic technology to profile human tumors for hundreds of “actionable” cancer gene mutations. This provided a basis for tumor mutation profiling as a means to stratify cancer patients for clinical trial enrollment and, in the future, optimal therapeutic choices. He also demonstrated the promise of massive parallel sequencing as a clinical tumor genomic profiling approach. This research has inspired personalized medicine initiatives at many cancer centers worldwide.

Dr. Garraway has been the recipient of several awards and honors, including the Minority Scholar Award from the American Association of Cancer Research, the Partners in Excellence Award, and the Burroughs-Wellcome Fund Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences. In the fall of 2007, he was awarded one of the first prestigious New Innovator Awards from the National Institutes of Health. In 2009, he was inducted into the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series

For more information go to http://wals.od.nih.gov/