Dr. Charles Shapiro to Lead Breast Cancer Research Program

Charles Shapiro has been named to lead the breast cancer research program at the Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James). Shapiro will lead an interdisciplinary team of clinical and research scientists whose sole focus is the study and treatment of breast cancer.
 
“By integrating clinical and translational research, our research will lead to a greater understanding about the biology of breast cancer and the development of new treatments for breast cancer. Underlying and at the center of everything we do in this great effort is women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer and their families,” Shapiro says.
“As breast cancer research leader for a developing program within the OSUCCC, I look forward to bringing together teams of lab and clinically-based investigators to work together to achieve the latest in the prevention, detection and treatment of breast cancer,” he said.
Creating success in the breast cancer program is a two-way street, he says.
“For research to be the most successful, there must be very strong collaboration between discoveries that are in made in the research lab and quickly tested in women with breast cancer, and equally important are the observations made in women with breast cancer that lead to questions that inform the next set of questions that are tested in lab,” Shapiro says.
Ohio State is uniquely positioned to discover transformative ways to prevent, detect and treat breast cancers with an outstanding group of clinical scientists skilled to bring the new discoveries to the clinic, one of the country’s highest rated National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Centers.
 
Shapiro’s efforts will focus on partnering with laboratory scientists in three key areas of research including efforts to use microRNAs to better understand the biology and classification of breast cancers, developing new drugs for breast cancer treatment, and how best to treat the breast cancer stromal tissue, which is the tissue surrounding the breast cancer that can exert anti-tumor effects on breast cancer.
 
“These key areas are very strong within OSUCCC and developing the means to enhance and expand these areas into early phase clinical trials is one of my primary goals,” Shapiro says.
Shapiro will lead efforts to increase the number of breast cancer clinical trials and the number of patients on those trials, as well as increasing the number of funded investigators who specialize in breast cancer research.
“Dr. Shapiro will oversee an infrastructure to foster breakthrough discoveries in breast cancer research that will allow the newest and best treatments to reach patients as quickly as possible,” says Peter Shields, MD, deputy director of the OSUCCC – James.
Shapiro came to Ohio State in 1998 and is a professor of internal medicine and also serves as director of breast medical oncology. He is a nationally known clinical investigator whose research interests include the development of novel treatments for breast cancer and treatment-related side effects of breast cancer, in particular the side effects of adjuvant chemotherapy in young women. He is currently overseeing major clinical trial and laboratory research efforts to develop new therapies that are effective for ‘triple negative’ breast cancer