Gopa Iyer
Medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering who heads its bladder cancer section and studies the genetics behind how bladder tumors respond to drugs
Section Head, Bladder Cancer, Genitourinary Oncology Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center · Medical Oncology fellowship, Memorial Sloan Kettering · Internal Medicine residency, University of Michigan · MD, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
Genitourinary Oncology Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York, New York, USA) ↗
Gopa Iyer is first author of an Atlas study (IYE2012) that started with one unusual patient. In a clinical trial of everolimus, a drug that blocks mTOR, in advanced bladder cancer, one patient had a complete and unusually long-lasting remission. The team sequenced the whole genome of that patient's tumor and found a mutation that knocks out TSC1. TSC1 is part of the brake that normally keeps mTOR in check, so a tumor without it depends heavily on mTOR and is easy to hit with an mTOR blocker.
The group then checked 109 more bladder tumors and found TSC1 mutations in about 8 percent. In the trial, patients whose tumors carried such mutations tended to do better on everolimus. Because the idea grew from a single patient, the Atlas treats it as a strong hypothesis rather than proof. The paper helped start the practice of studying exceptional responders: sequencing the rare patient for whom a drug works unusually well to learn who else might benefit.
Iyer trained in medicine at Vanderbilt University, did a residency in internal medicine at the University of Michigan, and completed a medical oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Today Iyer is a genitourinary medical oncologist and early drug development specialist there and heads the bladder cancer section. The research centers on the genetic makeup of bladder cancer through MSK's Bladder Cancer Oncogenome Project, and on clinical trials of new drugs for cancers of the bladder, kidney and prostate.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2012 | H | Genome sequencing identifies a basis for everolimus sensitivity IYE2012 First author: led the genome sequencing of an exceptional everolimus responder and the follow-up that linked TSC1 loss to drug sensitivity in bladder cancer. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Gopa Iyer.
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- David B. Solit Physician-scientist who used whole-genome sequencing of an exceptional responder to show that TSC1 mutations can predict sensitivity of bladder cancer to the mTOR inhibitor everolimus.
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