Vered Stearns, MD, Member
BCRF Scientific Advisory Committee

Dr. Stearns completed a B.S. equivalent at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, in Israel in 1989. After relocating to the United States, she completed her medical school training at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, where she received her M.D. in 1992. Dr. Stearns completed her Internal Medicine residency at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, DC in 1995. She subsequently completed a Medical Oncology Fellowship at Georgetown University and the Lombardi Cancer Center when she developed interest in translational breast cancer research.

Dr. Stearns joined the faculty at the Lombardi Cancer Center at the Georgetown University in 1999, and at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2001. In 2002, she joined the faculty at the Breast Cancer Research Program at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins. She is a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Association for Cancer Research.

Dr. Stearns' long-term research goal is to improve upon current practices by individualizing therapies for breast cancer. While administering standard chemotherapy in the preoperative setting, She examines molecular markers and functional imaging that may assist in early determination of sensitivity or resistance to treatments. The long-term goal is to add novel agents to standard regimens using surrogate markers as endpoints. The work is supported by the prestigious Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award and by the NCI. Dr. Stearns has also examined surrogate markers that may predict response to treatments that may prevent breast cancer such as tamoxifen and anastrozole.

Dr. Stearns is a member of a large group funded by the NIH/NIGMS to evaluate the role of genetic polymorphism in efficacy and safety to common breast cancer treatments such as tamoxifen. Finally, Dr. Stearns has spent considerable time focusing on improving the quality of life of women who have survived their breast cancer and suffer bothersome hot flashes. Further work focuses on a better understanding of mechanism of action of agents that control hot flashes.