Category: Awards

Dr. Raut has been awarded a $3.6M NIH grant for the study, “Supratherapeutic Paclitaxel Buttresses Reduce Locoregional Recurrence Rates Following Surgery for Soft Tissue Sarcomas.”

This study will evaluate investigator-designed, biphasic chemotherapy-loaded polymer films to determine if early, but not burst, release of physically entrapped paclitaxel followed by extended release of covalently-bound paclitaxel (1) will reduce locoregional rates and extend survival in patient-derived liposarcoma and leiomyosarcoma xenograft surgical models and (2) safely deliver drug locoregionally, achieving high local tissue drug levels with minimal systemic delivery when implanted in situ. This grant is a successor to a prior R01 by the same investigators.

Chandrajit P. Raut, MD, MSc
Chief, Division of Surgical Oncology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
BWH Distinguished Chair in Surgical Oncology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Director, Center for Sarcoma and Bone Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Raut is a committed clinician who specializes in the multidisciplinary care of patients with soft tissue sarcoma. He is also a prolific researcher and has a multi-PI R01 grant to evaluate an innovative drug-eluting film to be placed in the surgical bed and reduce tumor local recurrence rates. Additionally, he was co-PI on a multi-institutional phase II clinical trial evaluating five years of adjuvant imatinib for primary gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), co-investigator on an international phase III randomized clinical trial evaluating the use of preoperative radiation therapy for retroperitoneal sarcomas and a member of The Cancer Genome Atlas Sarcoma (TCGA-SARC) working group of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Cancer Institute (NCI).

Dr. Raut serves as section editor for sarcoma in the journals Cancer and Annals of Surgical Oncology, associate editor for the journal Sarcoma and editorial board member for the journal ACS Case Reports in Surgery. He has authored over 210 papers and over 30 book chapters.

Dr. Raut is a graduate of Stanford University (BA/BS), University of Oxford (MSc) and Harvard Medical School (MD). He completed a residency in general surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital followed by a fellowship in surgical oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Dr. Guerriero has been awarded a $2.4M NIH grant for the study, “Immunometabolic pathways enabled by PARP inhibition in breast cancer.”

Macrophages are highly suppressive in the breast tumor and contribute to chemo and immunotherapy resistance. Dr. Guerriero’s lab recently identified that PARP inhibitors (PARPi), a commonly used cancer therapy, induce lipogenic metabolism in TAMs, rendering them even more suppressive, which in turn drives them to inhibit T-cell function and activation and limit therapeutic responses. This work will investigate how lipogenic macrophage and T-cell metabolism in breast cancer is regulated during PARPi therapy, which is likely to provide opportunities for the development of novel treatment strategies that hold the power to overcome the immune-suppressive tumor microenvironment and improve PARPi therapy success in a number of cancer types.

Jennifer Guerriero, PhD
Lead Investigator, Division of Breast Surgery
Director, Breast Immunology Laboratory, Dana-Farber Susan F. Smith Women’s Cancer Program
Assistant Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Guerriero graduated from Northeastern University with a BS in biochemistry. She obtained a PhD in immunology and pathology and molecular and cellular biology at Stony Brook University. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in medical oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Dr. Guerriero is an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR); the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC), where she is the chair of the Early Career Scientist Committee; and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). She is a working group member of the Immuno-Oncology interest group and the TNBC breast group of the Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium (TBCRC), which conducts innovative and high-impact clinical trials for breast cancer.

Dr. Guerriero’s research interests include harnessing the anti-tumor potential of tumor-associated macrophages for breast cancer immunotherapy, understanding how breast cancer cell intrinsic mutations regulate the tumor microenvironment, and elucidating the biology, diversity and ontogeny of tumor macrophages in breast tumors. The major goal of the breast immunology lab is to perform in-depth analysis of animal models and patient samples to efficiently guide rational use and development of immunotherapy modalities for the treatment of breast cancer.

Congratulations to the following Department of Surgery faculty members who have recently received awards.

Brent T. Shoji, MD
2021 Distinguished Clinician Award, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

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Stanley W. Ashley, MD
Senior Faculty Mentor Award, BWPO Pillar Awards

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Zara Cooper, MD, MSc
Diversity and Inclusion Service Award, BWPO Pillar Awards

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Pardon R. Kenney, MD, MS
Clinical Teacher Award, BWPO Pillar Awards