Larry Norton, MD

I am a board-certified medical oncologist with broad interests in cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. In my clinical practice I care for women with breast cancer, and I am now Deputy Physician-in-Chief for Breast Cancer Programs at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and Medical Director of the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center.

My research concerns the basic biology of cancer; the mathematics of tumor causation and growth; and the development of approaches to better diagnosis, prevention, and drug treatment of the disease. I am involved in many areas of research including identifying the genes that predispose people to cancer or that cause cancer, developing new drugs, monoclonal antibodies that target growth factor receptors, and vaccines. A major milestone in my research career was the development of an approach to therapy called “dose density,” or “sequential dose density.” This is a new and more effective way of using anticancer drugs, based on a mathematical model I developed with my colleagues, which maximizes the killing of cancer cells while minimizing toxicity.