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Rosandra Kaplan, MD
I am a pediatric oncologist with a special focus on caring for children, adolescents, and young adults who have lymphomas or germ cell tumors. I also have an interest in developing new therapies for children with cancer. My research focuses on understanding how cancer spreads and how it develops its own blood supply. The work aims not only to understand these fundamental processes of cancer progression but also to develop novel therapies that target a tumor’s ability to grow blood vessels and spread to distant sites. As a member of the pediatric developmental therapies team, I participate in clinical care as well as clinical and laboratory research, I am committed to the goal of improving the treatment of children with cancer. I am part of the Children's Oncology Group, which includes biology studies in lymphoma focusing on novel anti-angiogenic agents for relapsed Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. I am also a member of the Pediatric Experimental Therapeutics Investigational Consortium (POETIC), which was founded by my team member Dr. Tanya Trippett.
My laboratory, which is located at Weill Cornell Medical College, focuses on the earliest events in the tumor microenvironment and on distant sites during the metastatic process and translates these findings into the clinical setting. I have helped develop a novel paradigm demonstrating that even localized tumors have systemic effects to prepare distant tissue sites for spread, or metastases. This paradigm is based on our discoveries that bone-marrow-derived cells are recruited to future sites of metastasis and establish a receptive microenvironment for incoming circulating tumor cells. We have determined that these specialized bone marrow-derived cells are present in the circulatory system as well as in metastatic tissue of patients with newly diagnosed pediatric and adult cancers, including pediatric lymphoma and rhabdomyosarcoma, as well as in adult cancers such as breast, colorectal, and lung cancers. These cells not only may serve as a useful biomarker indicating tendency for metastasis but are fundamental mediators of the process and, therefore, will likely be useful targets for the prevention of metastases in the neoadjuvant setting. The role of these cells in promoting immune evasion, neo-angiogenesis, tumor progression, and the specific regulation of gene expression in premetastatic niche are current areas of focus.
I am a Charles, Lillian and Betty Neuwirth Scholar in Clinical Oncology and have been an invited speaker at the 100th Annual AACR meeting in California and the Tumor Microenvironment meeting in Paris, France. I am the recipient of several grants including the Doris Duke Charitable Career Development Award, a co-investigator in the Komen Foundation Investigator-Initiated Award, Hope Street Kids grant award, ASCO young investigator award, and the Association for Research of Childhood Cancer.
Phone
212-639-3964
Education
MD, Dartmouth Medical School
Residencies
Children's Hospital Boston/Boston Medical Center
Fellowships
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Board Certifications
Pediatrics
Clinical Expertise
Pediatric Medical Oncology; Hodgkin's Disease; Pediatric Lymphomas
Department & Service
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