Lajos Pusztai, MD, DPhil

Dr. Pusztai is Professor of Medicine at Yale University and Scientific Co-Director of the Breast Center, and Co-Director of the Cancer Center Genomics, Genetics, and Epigenetics Program. Dr. Pusztai is also Chair of the Breast Cancer Research Committee of the South West Oncology Group (SWOG). He received his medical degree from the Semmelweis University of Medicine in Budapest, and his D.Phil. degree from the University of Oxford in England.

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His research group has made important contributions to establish that estrogen receptor-positive and-negative breast cancers have fundamentally different molecular, clinical and epidemiological characteristics. He has been a pioneer in evaluating gene expression profiling as a diagnostic technology to predict chemotherapy and endocrine therapy sensitivity and have shown that different biological processes are involved in determining the prognosis and treatment response in different breast cancer subtypes. His group has also developed new bioinformatics tools to integrate information from across different data platforms in order to define the molecular pathways that are disturbed in individual cancers and could provide the bases for individualized treatment strategies. He made important contributions to clarify the clinical value of preoperative (neoadjuvant) chemotherapy in different breast cancer subtypes. Dr Pusztai is also principal investigator of several clinical trials investigating new drugs, including immunotherapies for breast cancer. He has published over 250 scientific manuscripts in high impact medical journals including the NEJM, JAMA, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Nature Biotechnology, PNAS, Lancet Oncology and JNCI. He is among the top 1% most highly cited clinical investigators in medicine over the past 10 years according to a 2015 Thomson Reuters report. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of National Cancer Institute (JNCI), member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, former member of the NCI North American Breast Cancer Steering Committee and Co-Chair of the Trans-ALTTO Committee and Chair of the Data Safety Monitoring Committee of the OPTIMA trial in the United Kingdom.