Massachusetts General Hospital

BiographyAlice T. Shaw, MD, PhD, is an attending physician in the Center for Thoracic Cancers at Massachusetts General Hospital, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a clinical investigator at MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. In addition to caring for patients with lung cancer, Dr. Shaw also performs clinical and translational research.

Dr. Shaw's major research interests include studying anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) translocations in non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLS); developing targeted strategies to treat NSCLCs harboring activating KRAS mutations; discovering new targets in NSCLC using both genetic and phosphoproteomic strategies; and developing novel nanoparticle-based siRNA delivery systems to target genetically defined subsets of lung cancer. Dr Shaw has been awarded a number of research grants, including grants from the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, the Burroughs Welcome Fund, the V Foundation for Cancer Research, and the NIH/NCI.

Mass. General study defines a new genetic subtype of lung cancer

MGH Cancer Center investigators have defined the role of a recently identified gene abnormality – rearrangements in the ROS1 gene – in non-small-cell lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer death in the U.S. They also show that these tumors can be treated with crizotinib and describe the remarkable response of one patient to such treatment.

Phase III trial shows crizotinib superior to single-agent chemotherapy for ALK-positive lung cancer

The results of a new phase III trial show that crizotinib, a targeted therapy, is a more effective treatment than standard chemotherapy for patients with advanced, ALK-positive lung cancer.

MGH-led studies shed new light on targeted lung cancer therapy

Research teams led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center investigators are publishing two important studies regarding use of the targeted cancer drug crizotinib for treatment of advanced lung cancer driven by specific genetic mutations.