Massachusetts General Hospital

Biography

Dr. Ellisen is a practicing oncologist and researcher at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and co-Executive Director of the Cancer Center's Translational Research Laboratory (TRL). He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University, MD and PhD degrees from Stanford University, and completed residency training, oncology fellowship training, and postdoctoral research training at Brigham and Women's Hospital, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Mass General, respectively. Dr. Ellisen is widely published in the field of cancer biology and cancer genetics. His basic research efforts focus on chemosensitivity in breast and other cancers. His work in the TRL focuses on the clinical application of tumor genetic testing to advance the goal of personalized medicine. He serves on numerous grant review committees and editorial boards, and his work on personalized cancer medicine has been featured in the news media including the Wall Street Journal and the ABC Evening News.

ResearchOur research group is broadly interested in how genetic abnormalities within cancer cells influence their biology, and how that biology can in turn be exploited to therapeutic advantage. We address these questions through basic research studies of key tumor cell signaling pathways including p53, mTOR, and BRCA1/2. This work is complemented by genetic analysis of patient tumor samples conducted through our companion laboratory, the Mass General Cancer Center's Translational Research Laboratory (TRL). Finally, our discoveries in both the basic laboratory and the TRL are being applied in ongoing clinical trials which seek to identify predictive markers for response to specific therapeutic agents. Our ability to work at the interface of basic tumor biology and therapeutic application is strongly supported by the research and clinical infrastructure of the Cancer Center.

Publications

View my most recent publications at PubMed