Ó³»­´«Ã½

Matthew Meyerson is an institute member at the Ó³»­´«Ã½ of MIT and Harvard; the Charles A. Dana Chair in Human Cancer Genetics at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI); and professor of genetics and medicine at DFCI and Harvard Medical School. He is also co-director of the Center for Cancer Genomics at DFCI.

The Meyerson laboratory uses genomic approaches to discover the causes of human cancers and to translate these discoveries towards therapy. Working closely with colleagues in the Ó³»­´«Ã½â€™s Cancer Program including Gad Getz, Todd Golub, William Hahn, and William Sellers, the Meyerson group has contributed to the discovery of major cancer genes in lung, colon, and breast cancers, leukemias, and pediatric cancers, many with direct therapeutic implications. A team led by Meyerson and Sellers discovered frequent mutations in the epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase gene, EGFR, in lung adenocarcinomas. The EGFR mutations are tightly associated with clinical response to EGFR kinase inhibitors. This result helped to establish the paradigm where cancer treatment can be targeted directly at the molecular causes of the cancers.

Meyerson served as principal investigator in The Cancer Genome Atlas project (TCGA) of the National Institutes of Health, led the lung cancer disease working group of TCGA, and was co-chair of TCGA’s executive committee. The Meyerson laboratory and the TCGA lung cancer group identified the first somatic mutations of immune regulators and of splicing factors in lung cancer, in addition to multiple novel oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes in the RTK/Ras/Raf and MYC pathways.

In addition, Meyerson continues to pursue a long-standing interest in the discovery of pathogenic microbes. He and his students developed a genomic approach, sequence-based computational subtraction, to discover microbial sequences in cryptic infectious diseases. Using this approach, Meyerson and his colleagues have identified and are characterizing bacteria associated with colon carcinomas.

Currently, the Meyerson laboratory is focused on the understanding of genomic alterations within and beyond the coding genome through whole-genome sequencing, with a recent focus on DNA alterations that modify gene expression through enhancer rearrangements. They are also continuing to study specific genomic alterations in lung cancer and their implications, including kinase signaling, splicing alterations, inflammatory signaling, and aneuploidy.

Finally, together with Ó³»­´«Ã½ colleagues Stuart Schreiber, Todd Golub, and colleagues at Bayer HealthCare, Meyerson has initiated a systematic program in genome-inspired cancer drug discovery aimed at creating novel therapeutics for cancer patients. This program has resulted in development of BAY2927088, a potent and selective inhibitor of EGFR and ERBB2 mutants now in Phase III trials for treatment of ERBB2 mutant lung cancer.

Meyerson joined the faculty of DFCI and Harvard Medical School in 1998 and has mentored a generation of leading researchers in cancer genomics. He has received numerous honors including the AACR Ewing-Dunn Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pathology in Cancer Research, the Paul Marks Prize in Cancer Research, the Caine Holter Hope Now award from Uniting Against Lung Cancer, the AACR Team Science Award, the Ilchun Memorial Prize, the American Cancer Society Research Professorship, the Han-Mo Koo Memorial Award, and the Alfred G. Knudson Award in Cancer Genetics from the National Cancer Institute.

Meyerson received an A.B. cum laude in chemistry and physics from Harvard College, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and a Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard University. He was a resident in pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital and a post-doctoral fellow with Robert Weinberg at the Whitehead Institute.