Renowned cancer scientist Ramon E. Parsons, MD, PhD, who has held successive leadership positions within the Mount Sinai Health System since joining in 2013, has been named Director of The Tisch Cancer Institute.
Dr. Parsons replaces Steven J. Burakoff, MD, who has served as the Institute’s Director for the past decade, overseeing a period of significant expansion in cancer research and clinical care. Under Dr. Burakoff, Mount Sinai became a National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center and opened the Leon and Norma Hess Center for Science and Medicine, which provided expanded research space and outpatient cancer treatment. Dr. Burakoff will now serve as Dean for Cancer Innovation at Mount Sinai.
“A major goal of The Tisch Cancer Institute—which sees 10,000 patients a year—is to become a leader in early disease detection, intervention, and treatment through the development and implementation of diagnostic tools, vaccines, imaging, and immune monitoring,” Dr. Parsons says. “Tisch serves as a bridge to many departments, institutes, and hospitals across the Mount Sinai Health System.” This close association, he adds, enables the Institute to monitor and treat patients early, before their cancers become more aggressive, when their chances are greater for positive outcomes.
“We’re with patients from the beginning, so anything we can do to intervene earlier is going to be a benefit—anything from vaccines to screenings,” Dr. Parsons says.
A strategic plan created in 2016 also calls for Tisch to expand its novel therapeutics program and cancer clinical trials network throughout the Health System to include locations at Mount Sinai Downtown, Mount Sinai West, and later on, Mount Sinai St. Luke’s. The plan also calls for an increased focus on personalized medicine that utilizesthe latest technology in immunology, molecular biology, and genetics. Providing New York City’s diverse communities with greater access to innovative care will enable Mount Sinai to address health care disparities and build upon the strength of its population health programs. Plans call for the establishment of more community-based outcomes research, and behavioral oncology and epidemiology programs that would include smoking cessation, healthy eating, and exercise, as well as a new initiative in global oncology.
“Mount Sinai is committed to improving the quality and research of cancer control, treatment, and early detection,” Dr. Parsons says. “This is a wonderful opportunity to have an impact on our community.”
In addition, Dr. Parsons plans to enhance fellowship training; recruit and train clinical scientists to perform more patient-based research in oncology, pathology, surgery, and radiation oncology; and promote careers in immunotherapy research. Plans to create disease-focused centers of excellence that are funded by federal and collaborative grants and develop predictive genomics and personalized medicine in cancer are also on The Tisch Cancer Institute’s agenda.
Dr. Parsons is a proponent of immune-oncology treatments that help the body harness its immune system to fight off cancerous cells. More than two decades ago, as a research fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Dr. Parsons was involved in developing a test to detect hypermutating cancers. Today, he says, these cancers are proving to be more susceptible to new treatments that use immune checkpoint inhibitors.
“We didn’t know back then that it would be useful in a clinical treatment, and now it is,” Dr. Parsons says. “The test should be given as early as possible in a patient’s diagnosis so we can offer immune checkpoint inhibitors earlier, at the most advantageous point possible during patient treatment. That’s the sort of platform we will be building.”
By taking a thoughtful approach to growth, Dr. Parsons says the Institute will focus on providing the best evidence-based treatments to patients throughout the Health System. “It is important not to overpromise and under-deliver with so much at stake,” he says. “Good science and improved medical care must be done very deliberately and rigorously.”