Titles and Affiliations
Chief, Division of Population Sciences
Chandra Nohria Family Chair for AI in Cancer Research
Research Area
Using AI tools to accelerate the discovery of biomarkers and treatment insights in breast cancer.
Impact
Breast cancer care increasingly relies on molecular-level data. Information about the genes and proteins driving a patient’s cancer help guide treatment decisions. But many important clinical situations still lack reliable biomarkers to guide those decisions, even when large datasets are available. Uncovering useful biology behind treatment resistance or new drug targets has been difficult to scale as these datasets grow more complex. Dr. Van Allen’s team has been at the forefront of exploring a new generation of artificial intelligence tools, known as AI agents, that can carry out scientific research with limited human input. These tools present a unique opportunity to speed up biomarker discovery in breast cancer, but the approach remains untested and must be paired with rigorous clinical and experimental validation to ensure it generates practical, testable insights about how tumors respond and become resistant to therapy.
What’s Next
Dr. Van Allen will pioneer the use of these AI agents in breast cancer research, building algorithms that can identify new molecular biomarkers within large patient datasets and match patients with similar cases to inform real-time treatment decisions. This approach could help develop clinically useful genomic biomarkers for both existing and emerging breast cancer therapies, while also laying the groundwork for broader AI-driven biological discovery in breast cancer research.
Biography
Eliezer (Eli) Van Allen, MD is Chief of the Division of Population Sciences at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Chandra Nohria Family Chair for AI in Cancer Research at Dana-Farber, and a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is also an Institute Member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and a Member Researcher in The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. As both a medical oncologist and computational biologist, he develops algorithms to dissect high-dimensional data directly from cancer patients and uses these insights to address major open questions in the field. Dr. Van Allen’s research has led to significant advances in understanding the molecular origins of cancer, using artificial intelligence to discover novel resistance mechanisms to cancer therapies, and defining how genomics can guide clinical decision-making. Through these initiatives, he created the field of clinical computational oncology to advance and enable precision cancer medicine worldwide. Originally from Los Angeles, CA, he studied Symbolic Systems at Stanford University, obtained his MD from UCLA, and completed a residency in internal medicine at UCSF before coming to Boston and completing a medical oncology fellowship at the Dana-Farber/Partners Cancer Care program.
