Massachusetts General Hospital

BiographyDr. Sequist is originally from Michigan and studied chemistry at Cornell University. She received her MD from Harvard Medical School and trained in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and in hematology/oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she also received an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. She joined the faculty of the Center for Thoracic Cancers at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in 2005 and has an active clinical and translational research career, as well as a busy practice caring for patients with lung cancer. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Sequist's research focuses on studying novel targets and targeted agents for lung cancer treatment, particularly those that target the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and in detecting and studying the significance of tumor cells circulating in the bloodstream (circulating tumor cells, or CTCs). She aims to develop treatment algorithms for lung cancer that are more personalized than current strategies, utilizing targeted therapies specific to the patients' cancer genotypes, and understanding how this may change over the courses of the disease.

Publications

View my most recent publications at PubMed

Mass. General study reveals how lung cancers evolve in response to targeted treatment

A detailed analysis of lung tumors that became resistant to targeted therapy drugs has revealed two previously unreported resistance mechanisms. The report also describes how the cellular nature of some tumors can change in response to treatment and finds how resistance-conferring mutations can disappear after treatment is discontinued.