Christopher Li, MD, PhD, MPH
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Seattle, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Titles and Affiliations
Professor, Public Health Sciences Division
Vice President, Faculty Affairs and Diversity
Associate Director, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Fred Hutch/University of Washington Cancer Consortium
Helen G. Edson Endowed Chair for Breast Cancer Research
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Seattle, Washington
Research area
Improving outcomes for patients with luminal B breast cancer by identifying which patients are at a high risk of recurrence.
Impact
Existing risk prediction tools like Oncotype DX® are immensely helpful for guiding treatment strategies for many newly diagnosed breast cancer patients. For example, patients with a high Oncotype DX® score are those with an elevated risk of recurrence, and chemotherapy is recommended for those patients. Patients with a low score have a low risk of recurrence and are not recommended to receive chemotherapy, thereby safely avoiding the side effects and stresses of that treatment. However, Oncotype DX® was primarily developed and assessed among patients with a subtype of breast cancer known as luminal A, whereas luminal B breast cancers are without these tools—and have a poorer prognosis relative to luminal A disease. Dr. Li and his team will leverage patient tumor tissue samples from a large study of different subtypes of breast cancer to develop a new risk prediction model for luminal B breast cancer.
What’s next
The team will focus on a set of 66 luminal B patients who developed a recurrence and 66 matched luminal B patients who have not developed a recurrence. Deep molecular and genetic characterization of tumor tissue samples, together with clinical and epidemiological patient data, will be used to develop a risk model. The team will then validate their model on publicly available breast cancer datasets, and potentially identify new treatment strategies for subsets of luminal B patients based on this new risk assessment.
Biography
Christopher Li, MD, PhD completed his medical degree at the University of California, San Francisco and his PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Washington. He is the Vice President for Faculty Affairs and Diversity at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and the Associate Director for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion of the Fred Hutch/UW/Seattle Children’s Cancer Consortium (an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center). He holds the Helen G. Edson Endowed Chair for Breast Cancer Research and is a full professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and a research full professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington.
Dr. Li’s research spans breast and colorectal cancer early detection, screening, etiology, and survivorship. His work has identified novel risk factors related to the development of cancer and has evaluated the molecular features of cancer that are associated with poor outcomes. He also investigates the causes of disparities in cancer incidence, treatment, and mortality. Additionally, Dr. Li co-leads the NCI-funded SEER cancer registry serving western Washington state and Fred Hutch’s NCI-funded Population-based Research to Optimize the Screening Process (PROSPR) consortium Coordinating Center focused on improving screening for cervical, colorectal, and lung cancers.
