Titles and Affiliations
Professor of Oncology
Co-Director of Breast and Gynecologic Cancer Program
Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center
Chief Operating Officer, Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium
Research area
Accelerating new treatments to benefit patients through focused clinical trials.
Impact
As our understanding of the complexity of breast cancer continues to evolve, clinical research requires the design of smaller, focused trials that are enriched with studies to reveal the underlying biology. The Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium (TBCRC) was created to address this unmet need. TBCRC trials often include novel combinations of drugs, or they address highly specific questions that would go unanswered in larger, pharma-initiated studies. These studies are typically intensive in biospecimen acquisition, require specialized imaging, enroll fewer patients across a larger number of centers, and require coordinated planning among lab researchers, clinical trialists, biostatisticians, research coordinators, and patient advocates. Under the leadership of Dr. Antonio Wolff, TBCRC coalesces 18 leading clinical centers across the United States to organize these trials, fostering collaboration among some the greatest minds in breast cancer.
Progress Thus Far
To date, TBCRC has approved 71 clinical trials, enrolled over 7200 patients, and produced over 200 scientific peer-reviewed presentations and publications. Findings from these trials have been shared with the global breast cancer community and contributed to a more nuanced understanding of breast cancer progression and treatment.
What’s next
Over the next year, TBCRC will continue to enroll patients on 12 active TBCRC trials. Three trials recently approved will activate soon. Active trials include explorations of immunotherapy combination strategies to treat triple-negative breast cancer, investigations of endocrine therapy response in patients with invasive lobular carcinoma, and comparisons of endocrine therapies for breast cancer in men.
“Funding from the BCRF remains critical to bring together scientific resources and researchers to develop new strategies to reduce the burden of breast cancer.”
Biography
Antonio C. Wolff, MD is a Professor of Oncology at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and Co-Director of the Breast and Gynecologic Cancer Program at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center (Baltimore, MD). Dr. Wolff is the Chief Operating Officer for the Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium (TBCRC).
He received his medical degree at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and trained in medical oncology at JHU. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Chair of the ECOG-ACRIN Breast Cancer Committee, and a Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (FASCO) and past Chair of its Clinical Practice Guidelines Committee.
His research interests include new treatment strategies, the development and implementation of prognostic and predictive biomarkers (tissue, blood, and imaging) in clinical practice, and on how to improve the survivorship experience of breast cancer patients and their caregivers. He is a Susan G. Komen Scholar, recipient of a Cancer Clinical Investigator Team Leadership Award from the US National Cancer Institute and has been recognized since 2017 by Clarivate Analytics (Thomson Reuters) as one of the world’s most highly cited researchers (top 1% in clinical medicine). He maintains an active clinical practice dedicated to the care of patients with breast cancer and was inducted in 2018 as a member of the JHU Miller Coulson Academy of Clinical Excellence. In 2018, Dr. Wolff was recognized as one of 125 Living the Hopkins Mission Honorees, who were selected for their outstanding dedication to the institution’s core values of excellence and discovery, leadership and integrity, diversity and inclusion, and respect and collegiality, as part of the 125th anniversary celebration of the JHU School of Medicine.
