Jacob Eli Berchuck, MD
 |
Assistant Professor, Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology, School of Medicine
Graduate Programs
- Full Member - Cancer Biology
Education
MD, Duke University School of Medicine, 2013BS, Duke University, 2007
Contact Information
Email: jberchuck@emory.edu
Phone: 404-727-8253
Address:
Health Sciences Research Building, Room E320
1760 Haygood Drive NE
Atlanta, GA 30322
Improving outcomes for people living with advanced cancer will require developing clinical tools to optimize therapeutic decision-making for individual patients, understanding mechanisms of treatment resistance, and discovering the next generation of effective anti-cancer drugs. Progress towards these goals has been impeded by the intractable challenges of obtaining tumor tissue specimens. Liquid biopsies – studying tumor cell-free (cf)DNA circulating in the bloodstream – present an unprecedented opportunity to interrogate an individual patient's tumor molecular features in real-time, and longitudinally across their disease course. Further, the minimally-invasive nature of a blood draw compared to a tumor biopsy, allows for sample collection and analysis at unprecedented scale. We believe that liquid biopsy technologies are poised to revolutionize cancer research, propelling unprecedented scientific breakthroughs, and transforming patient care into a new era of precision and hope.
Our lab has made several contributions to advancing the field of liquid biopsy, including pioneering novel methods to profile epigenomic features in cell-free cfDNA, demonstrating the power of epigenomic liquid biopsies for non-invasive cancer detection, establishing the ability of liquid biopsies to deliver precision medicine for patients with advanced cancer, developing epigenomic cfDNA-based diagnostic tests to detect clinically actionable mechanisms of therapeutic resistance, and highlighting the power of integrated multiomic cfDNA profiling to maximize insights into tumor biology.
Building upon this work, we are deploying a rapidly evolving suite of liquid biopsy tools to generate predictive biomarkers to determine in real-time which treatments will be most, and least, likely to benefit individual patients, understand mechanisms of treatment resistance, and nominate novel therapeutic strategies for patients with advanced cancer.
Our lab has made several contributions to advancing the field of liquid biopsy, including pioneering novel methods to profile epigenomic features in cell-free cfDNA, demonstrating the power of epigenomic liquid biopsies for non-invasive cancer detection, establishing the ability of liquid biopsies to deliver precision medicine for patients with advanced cancer, developing epigenomic cfDNA-based diagnostic tests to detect clinically actionable mechanisms of therapeutic resistance, and highlighting the power of integrated multiomic cfDNA profiling to maximize insights into tumor biology.
Building upon this work, we are deploying a rapidly evolving suite of liquid biopsy tools to generate predictive biomarkers to determine in real-time which treatments will be most, and least, likely to benefit individual patients, understand mechanisms of treatment resistance, and nominate novel therapeutic strategies for patients with advanced cancer.
Chelsea Philpot (she/her)
Cancer Biology
Entrance Year: 2024
