Howard I Scher MD

Howard I. Scher, MD, FASCO, is Co-Chair, Center for Mechanism Based Therapy; Head of the Biomarker Development Initiative; Member and Attending Physician, Genitourinary Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), Professor of Medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical College, and the D. Wayne Calloway Chair in Urologic Oncology. Dr. Scher’s research is focused on the codevelopment of targeted therapies and biomarkers such as circulating tumor cells (CTCs) which can be used to guide treatment selection for the individual patient and improve the way drugs are evaluated in the clinic, accelerating regulatory approvals. Accordingly, he has led international efforts to standardize the design and analysis of phase II prostate cancer trials (PCWG2, PCWG3) and helped elucidate key molecular and genetic features of prostate cancer, translating these insights into the clinic by leading early phase and phase III registration trials of abiraterone acetate and enzalutamide which are now FDA approved. Dr. Scher serves as the principal investigator of the NIH Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) in Prostate Cancer at MSKCC and the Department of Defense-sponsored Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium (PCCTC), and has received the 2015 AACR Team Science Award for his multidisciplinary work developing AR inhibitors. Most recently Dr. Scher was elected to the Association of American Physicians and named a Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).