Kelly Mercier, PhD is a DTRF grant recipient, the DTRF Patient Registry and Natural History Study Principal Investigator, a medical strategy director at Nuvalent, and an adjunct associate professor at Duke University.

Dr. Mercier specializes in precision oncology and patient-centric studies. She is passionate about desmoid tumor research and is thrilled to be able to contribute her scientific knowledge to better understand and treat desmoid tumors.

Alexander Lazar, MD, PhD, is a practicing academic pathologist at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center where his clinical, academic, and research interests are focused on sarcoma and the genomics of solid tumors. Working within a multidisciplinary team at a high-volume treatment center for desmoid tumors, Dr. Lazar has worked on multiple projects involving these tumors.

Dr. Mrinal Gounder is the Scientific Director of DTRF and a member of the Medical and Scientific Advisory Boards. He is a medical oncologist at MSKCC specializing in sarcomas and developing new drugs in cancer and specializes in desmoid tumors. He is an internationally recognized leader in desmoid tumors and has led numerous clinical trials in desmoid tumors. He led the phase 3, international studies of sorafenib and nirogacestat in desmoid tumors. In collaboration with DTRF, MSKCC, and IQVIA, he developed the GODDESS© patient reported outcomes tool – the first of its kind to evaluate the experience of patients with desmoid tumors. 

Jesse Boehm, PhD, is the Chief Science Officer of Break Through Cancer, a novel foundation dedicated to urgently reimagining how we cure cancer by harnessing the power of extraordinary partnerships. With an initial $250M from private philanthropy, Break Through Cancer unites five leading cancer institutions: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, jointly focused on overcoming barriers impossible for any single organization to solve. The collective intention is to build an expansive member community of diverse partners committed to working together.

Dr. Boehm maintains a research lab at MIT’s Koch Institute focused on bringing the power of functional genomics to bear on living samples from cancer patients with particular emphasis on rare and underrepresented tumors.

Before transitioning to MIT, Dr. Boehm previously spent 14 years in the Broad Institute’s Cancer Program, most recently as an Institute Scientist and Scientific Director of the Cancer Dependency Map project. As the Director of the Broad’s Cancer Model Development Center (part of the National Cancer Institute’s Human Cancer Models Initiative), he led his laboratory in developing a scalable capacity to convert patient tumors into organoids and other cell models. Prior, he was the recipient of a Broad Institute Merkin Fellowship and the Associate Director of the Broad’s Cancer Program. In these leadership roles, he drove the scientific planning and strategic execution of a diverse set of program projects, collaborations, and activities for more than a decade.

Propelling the “cancer research ecosystem of the future” to benefit patients as rapidly as possible is his ultimate professional passion and ambition.

Dr. Boehm received his B.S. in biology from MIT and his PhD from Harvard University, Division of Medical Sciences at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Benjamin Alman, MD, is an orthopaedic clinician-scientist, whose research focuses on understanding the role of developmentally important processes in pathologic and reparative processes involving the musculoskeletal system. The long-term goal of his work is to use this knowledge to identify improved therapeutic approaches to orthopaedic disorders. He makes extensive use of genetically modified mice to model human disease, and has used this approach to identify new drug therapies for musculoskeletal tumors and to improve the repair process in cartilage, skin, and bone. 

He also works on cellular heterogeneity in sarcomas, and has identified a subpopulation of tumor initiating cells in musculoskeletal tumors. In this work, he also has identified specific cell populations that are responsible for joint and bone development. 

He was recently recruited from the University of Toronto to Duke University to chair the department of orthopedics, which was established in 2010, and includes a large musculoskeletal research component. He has half his time protected for his research work. Dr. Alman was the Principal Investigator in the DTRF-funded collaborative project, “Collaboration for a Cure: Identifying new therapeutic targets for desmoid tumors.”  He also facilitates the annual DTRF International Desmoid Tumor Research Workshop.

Aimee Crago, MD, is a surgeon-scientist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center where she serves as an Assistant Attending. As a member of the institution’s Sarcoma Disease Management Team, she is an active participant in the care of patients with desmoid fibromatosis and coordinates clinical research and basic science efforts examining the causes of desmoid formation and progression. 

Her research has been funded by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American College of Surgeons, the Kristen Ann Carr Fund, Cycle for Survival and the MSKCC SPORE in soft tissue sarcoma. 

Most recently she has worked to create a nomogram that uses clinical characteristics to predict outcome after surgical resection of desmoid tumors, and she is actively engaged in work characterizing genomic changes that mediate formation of desmoid tumors.