News & Events: Laura J. Esserman, M.D., M.B.A.

Susan G. Komen®, the world's leading breast cancer organization, recognized two widely respected and innovative breast cancer researchers this week, announcing that Donald McDonnell, Ph.D., and Laura Esserman, M.D., have been selected as this year's recipients of the Brinker Awards – Komen's highest scientific honor. This year's Brinker Award for Scientific Distinction in Clinical Research will be presented to Laura Esserman, M.D., M.B.A., Director, Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center, Alfred A. de Lorimier Endowed Chair in General Surgery, Professor of Surgery and Radiology, University of [...]

Laura J. Esserman, MD, MBA and her research team have been awarded a $9.1M NIH R01 grant from the National Cancer Institue (NCI). The focus of the grant is to enable expansion of The WISDOM Study to new recruitment sites/partnerships including Louisiana State University, the University of Chicago, the University of Alabama, and a women's health clinical care network in Florida. This will advance the goal of increasing diversity in the study, provide the benefits of the study to underserved populations, and enable generalizability of study results to the demographics of the US. Project [...]

The UCSF Department of Surgery has just been awarded a paradigm-shifting NIH T-32 training grant for Surgical Oncology. The goal of this new innovative program is to train future leaders in surgery and oncology to be change agents in driving science and value-based medicine by giving them a foundation in translational science, regulatory science and implementation science. Training in these areas will further help move great ideas from bench to bedside. Improving care in the next decade requires scientific creativity, as well as knowledge of the factors that enable and impede change, and the [...]

"Getting the news that you have cancer is overwhelming and frightening. The COVID-19 crisis adds another layer of anxiety. But know this: you can protect yourself from COVID-19 without compromising your cancer treatment. Don't panic. In the vast majority of cases, a diagnosis of cancer is not an emergency even though it feels like one. There is time to learn about your options and sort out what is right for you. For now, there will be changes to how we do things. Some of the changes will feel disruptive, but many will lead to better, more patient-centered care. Minimizing your chances of [...]

"Quantum Leap Healthcare Collaborative (QLHC), a non-profit organization focused on uniting patient care and research, and sponsor of the adaptive platform I-SPY 2 Trial™, announced today a unique pre-competitive consortium created for an I-SPY COVID Trial to rapidly identify therapies to treat acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in critically ill COVID-19 patients. Approximately 10-15% of patients infected with SARS-CoV2 develop a severe acute respiratory illness, and nearly 70% of patients admitted to an ICU require ventilation for an average of two weeks; it is estimated over half [...]

Laura J. Esserman, MD, MBA has been awarded a $760K FDA Grant through the UCSF-Stanford Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (CERSI). CERSI is a joint undertaking among the UCSF School of Pharmacy and School of Medicine, the Stanford University School of Engineering and School of Medicine and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the first regulatory science and innovation center on the West Coast. The grant funds Phase 2 of the "OneSource" Project, which is designed to address regulatory challenges of information systems relating to clinical research given the [...]

Dr. Laura Esserman is on a mission to bring the blockchain to health care. I can already hear the audible groans and see the general eye-rolling—I get it. There have been plenty of bold claims when it comes to blockchain, the decentralized ledger technology, in pretty much every sector from food to medicine. So far, the sizzle to steak ratio has been out of whack, and skepticism is integral to good science. But Esserman, a renowned surgeon and director of the UCSF Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center, believes blockchain can slash the cost of cancer drug development while spurring new [...]

Behind any landmark cure is years of medical research. But the old goal of research — to find a one-size-fits-all treatment for a disease, based on a set of standard protocols — must radically change to further and diversify advances in the field, experts argued at the TIME 100 Health Summit on Thursday. "We're all in it, at the end of the day, for our patients," said Dr. Laura Esserman, professor of surgery at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. "We want to get people to a better outcome." In the field of breast cancer, for example, the same cancer screening and [...]

Laura J. Esserman, MD, MBA was selected as the 2018 OncLive® "Giant of Cancer Care" in Cancer Diagnostics. Dr. Esserman is professor of Surgery and Radiology at UCSF and director of the UCSF Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center. She was chosen by an elite committee of her peers based on her long history of outstanding work in the field as noted in the announcement: Dr. Esserman led efforts to address harms of screening including overdiagnosis, and proposed tools including the development of molecular diagnostics to help reclassify tumors as indolent lesions of epithelial origin or [...]

Renowned breast surgeon Laura J. Esserman, MD, MBA gave a captivating talk about her richly textured life and innovative research at a Staff Engagement Event hosted by the Department of Surgery on February 9th at UCSF Mount Zion. The research portion of her talk focused on two landmark clinical trials she serves as principal investigator on. The first, the WISDOM Study (Women Informed to Screen Depending on Measures of Risk (WISDOM), is a pragmatic, adaptive, randomized clinical trial comparing a comprehensive risk-based, or personalized approach to traditional annual breast cancer [...]

An article commentary recently published in NPJ Breast Cancer, a Nature Research journal, discusses the WISDOM Study (Women Informed to Screen Depending on Measures of Risk (WISDOM), a groundbreaking clinical trial recruiting 100,000 women from throughout California that will compare annual breast cancer screening with personalized risk-based breast cancer screening. The study is led by Laura J. Esserman, MD, MBA (pictured), professor of surgery and director of the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. She and the other Wisdom Study [...]

Laura Esserman, M.D., MBA, Professor of Surgery and Radiology at UCSF, and Director of the UCSF Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center, was recently interviewed by NPR about a study she led utilizing MammaPrint, a diagnostic assay (test), which appears to precisely distinguish between "ultralow-risk" breast tumors and more aggressive ones. This test could inform the decision to whether to recommend adjuvant (post-surgical) therapy, potentially sparing patients from the toxic effects of chemotherapy and radiation.  For years, doctors have focused on detecting breast cancer at the earliest [...]

UCSF News reports on the results of a new multi-center study showing that scalp cooling can mitigate one of most devastating side effects of systemic chemotherapy, hair loss, in a significant number of breast cancer patients. The results were reported on in JAMA. Hope S. Rugo, MD , was the lead author and Principal Investigator on the study.  Michelle E. Melisko, MD, and Laura Esserman, MD (pictured), of UCSF were among the coauthors of the study. Scalp cooling can lessen some chemotherapy-induced hair loss – one of the most devastating hallmarks of cancer – in certain breast cancer [...]

UCSF News reports on Time magazine's selection of Laura Esserman, MD, MBA,  to the 2016 TIME 100, the magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Dr. Esserman is Professor of Surgery and Radiology, and Director of the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center at UCSF. Time magazine has named internationally renowned breast cancer oncologist Laura Esserman, MD, MBA, to the 2016 TIME 100, the magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Esserman has been at the forefront of efforts to change the delivery of breast cancer services as well as [...]

The NY Times profiled UCSF breast cancer surgeon Dr. Laura Esserman and her challenge to  the conventional wisdom surrounding breast cancer screening. Esserman argues that most patients will not benefit from early detection of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) lesions and further that the ominous word "carcinoma" be dropped from the medical term and the condition renamed "indolent lesions of epithelial origin," or IDLEs. Late one afternoon this summer, Dr. Laura J. Esserman, a breast cancer surgeon at the University of California, San Francisco, sat in a darkened room scrutinizing a [...]

UCSF News reports on a new study, led by breast cancer researcher Laura Esserman, MD, MBA,  that will compare a personalized approach to breast cancer screening with annual mammograms. A research team at UC San Francisco has won a five-year award of $14.1 million from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to investigate whether a personalized approach to breast cancer screening is as safe and effective as annual mammograms. The project, called the WISDOM study, will be led by breast cancer researcher Laura Esserman, MD, MBA, professor of surgery and director of the [...]

The "shared decision-making" model fosters a higher level of collaboration between doctors and the people they treat. Rose Gutierrez has a big decision to make. Gutierrez, who was diagnosed with breast cancer last spring, had surgery and 10 weeks of chemotherapy. But the cancer is still there. Now Jasmine Wong (pictured right), a surgeon at the University of California, San Francisco, is explaining the choices—Gutierrez can either have another lumpectomy followed by radiation, or she can get a total mastectomy. "I think both options are reasonable," Wong said. "It's just a matter of how [...]

UCSF News reports on new results showing the promise and potential of I-SPY 2 Trial, personalized medicine study designed to identify breast cancer patients most likely to benefit from an array experimental drugs. In an innovative clinical trial led by UC San Francisco, the experimental drug neratinib along with standard chemotherapy was found to be a beneficial treatment for some women with newly diagnosed, high-risk breast cancer. Additionally, researchers learned that an algorithm used in the adaptive, randomized trial known as I-SPY 2 was highly effective at predicting the success of [...]

UCSF News reports on the recommendations of an NCI scientific panel chaired by Laura Esserman, MD, MBA, Professor of Surgery and Radiology and Director, UCSF Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center,  to reduce overdiagnosis and overtreatment. To address the growing problem of people being overdiagnosed and overtreated for cancer, a group of scientists convened by the National Cancer Institute and chaired by a UC San Francisco breast cancer expert is proposing a major update of the way the nation approaches diseases now classified as "cancer." The "Viewpoint" article was published online [...]

The San Francisco Chronicle recently profiled UCSF breastcare surgeon Dr. Laura Esserman,  There is no starched white lab coat for Dr. Laura Esserman. Instead, the tall and striking breast cancer researcher, surgeon and visionary favors colorful clothes, high heels and, on a recent day, metallic blue nail polish. Before she operates, just as the general anesthetic is being administered, Esserman sings the patient's requested song. A talented musician with a voice for opera, Esserman delivers songs as varied as "Don't You Fret" from "Les Miserables" to the Sarah Palin rap from "Saturday [...]