Samuel Singer, MD, FACS

I am a surgical oncologist who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of soft tissue sarcoma. I have a special expertise and experience in the multi-modality treatment of soft tissue sarcoma, which includes performing carefully planned limb-sparing surgery that in certain situations is combined with radiation or chemotherapy. At Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, I work closely with a multidisciplinary team of soft tissue pathologists, medical oncologists, and radiation oncologists to provide the best treatment plan for each individual patient.

Soft tissue sarcomas are relatively uncommon, especially when considered as individual histological subtypes (of which there are more than 50). Treatment outcome generally is improved significantly when patients are managed by a multidisciplinary team of experts in a tertiary center of excellence that treats a large volume of patients with sarcoma. Memorial Sloan-Ketterings’s team of soft tissue sarcoma experts likely has the largest experience with these tumors of any medical group in the world.

In addition to my clinical sarcoma practice, I have initiated an extensive laboratory research effort designed to develop new methods to improve the diagnosis of sarcoma and increase the accuracy of predicting treatment outcome and survival for individual patients. These new methods will eventually enable the treating physician to more accurately predict a patient’s response to treatment (such as radiation or chemotherapy). I have also been actively involved in developing and designing new targeted therapies for soft tissue sarcoma such as: PPAR gamma ligands for the treatment of liposarcoma; Gleevec therapy for gastrointestinal stromal sarcoma; and anti-angiogenesis therapy for soft tissue sarcoma.