José Baselga, MD

2007-2008 BCRF Project:
Molecular targeted treatments against HER2 overexpressing breast cancer result in significant survival improvements. However, primary or acquired resistance to these therapies is emerging as a challenging problem. With the support of The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, in the last year Dr. Baselga and his team identified that a truncated form of the HER2 receptor, known as p95HER2 (or HER-2 CTF), is frequently present in HER2 positive tumors. Presence of p95HER2 results in lack of response to trastuzumab (Herceptin). The researchers have observed in experimental models that p95HER2 expressing tumors may benefit from therapy with the tyrosine kinase inhibitor lapatinib. They will study in patients whether lapatinib is active in p95HER2 tumors. In addition they will explore new approaches to the therapy of patients with HER2 overexpressing tumors.

Mid-Year Progress Report:
Dr. Baselga reports that p95HER2 expression was evaluated in 25 primary tumors from patients who had participated in various lapatinib clinical trials. As expected, the researchers have observed p95HER2 expression in a number of cases and are waiting for the clinical follow-up data to find an eventual correlation between presence of p95HER2 and responsiveness to the tyrosine kinase inhibitor. With respect to their additional aim of Identifying genes and signaling pathways mediating resistance to anti-HER2 and PI3K inhibitors, the researchers are now starting to evaluate whether PI3K inhibitors can overcome both trastuzumab and lapatinib resistance in terms of cell proliferation and tumor growth.

Bio:
José Baselga is the Chairman of the Medical Oncology Service and Director of the Division of Medical Oncology, Hematology, and Radiation Oncology at the Vall d'Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain, and a Professor of Medicine at the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona. He is a member of the Editorial Board for Cancer Cell, Clinical Cancer Research and Investigational New Drugs. Dr. Baselga has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles, in addition to over 300 abstracts and book chapters. His research interests are in clinical breast cancer and in translational and early clinical research in the area of growth factor receptors and downstream molecules as targets for breast cancer therapy. He has been involved in the clinical development of several new agents including: trastuzumab, cetuximab, gefitinib, erlotinib, EMD 72000, ras farnesyltransferase inhibitors, m-TOR inhibitors, and a variety of antiangiogenic agents.

He is a member of several Committees of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR); Scientific Chairman of the Spanish Breast Cancer cooperative group (SOLTI); past-member of the Board of Directors of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO); Member of the Scientific Advisory Committee since 2006 and Chairman of the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) and Young Medical Oncologists Working Group; Member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Ludwing Institute for Cancer Research (LICR). In addition, Dr. Baselga is currently the President-Elect of ESMO.

Dr. Baselga received his M.D. degree from the Universidad Autonoma of Barcelona in 1982. He performed Internal Medicine Residencies at Vall d'Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona and at State University of New York and a fellowship in Medical Oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. At the completion of his fellowship, he joined the staff at the Breast Medicine service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center until 1996 when he returned to Spain.