Howard I. Scher, MD
Genitourinary Medical Oncologist
My Role at MSKWe post reviews for MSK healthcare providers who have at least 30 patient experience surveys completed. If you do not see reviews for a provider, it may be because they do not yet have enough survey responses, or the provider may not be part of the group of healthcare providers included in the survey.
Only outpatient providers are included in the survey. Healthcare providers who only work in the hospital or in urgent care are not included in the survey. Pathologists or researchers who do not provide direct care to patients do not have reviews.
Areas of Expertise
My Specialties
- Prostate Cancer and Other Genitourinary Malignancies
- Immunotherapy
About Me
- Head, Biomarker Development Program
- D. Wayne Calloway Chair in Urologic Oncology
I am a board-certified medical oncologist with special expertise in treating men with advanced prostate cancer. I served as Chief of the Genitourinary Oncology Service at the Sidney Kimmel Center for Urologic and Prostate Cancers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for 25 years.
The Genitourinary Oncology Service program is dedicated to the treatment of prostate cancer, testicular cancer, bladder and upper-tract urothelial cancer, and kidney cancer. Our objective is to foster synergy between scientific research and clinical practice, and to ensure that promising scientific discoveries are used to develop new diagnostic tests and treatments for patients.
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My own research is focused on three critical areas: developing treatments that target specific signaling pathways that contribute to prostate cancer growth, developing non-invasive methods to determine whether these agents are working, and improving the way drugs are evaluated in the clinic.
Targeted therapies, which attack specific cancer cells without harming normal cells, have the potential to treat cancers with fewer side effects than conventional therapies. Critical to the development of this approach, is to determine which treatment is most likely to be benefit an individual patient. Currently, prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is the best routinely available biomarker providing diagnostic and prognostic information about prostate cancer. PSA testing is useful, but does not reliably determine whether or not a treatment is working, nor does not provide definitive guidance in selecting one therapy over another. My colleagues and I are evaluating promising new technologies to capture and characterize circulating tumor cells from a routine blood draw. We are finding that the number of circulating tumor cells in a patient’s blood helps determine a patient’s prognosis and whether or not a treatment is working. Circulating tumor cells are also providing a biological snapshot of an individual patient’s tumor, which may help determine the choice of therapy.
As a member of the Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Working Group, I led an international effort to standardize development of the design, conduct, and analysis of phase 2 clinical trials in prostate cancer, so we can better evaluate new therapeutics and assess their effectiveness using novel imaging modalities. The recommendations were incorporated and contributed to the successful development of zytiga (now approved) and enzalutamide (under review by the FDA). Both of these agents target androgen receptor signaling and were shown to prolong the survival of men with castration-resistant disease. I also developed the Clinical States Model of Prostate Cancer Progression, which, in categorizing the clinical spectrum of prostate cancer from diagnosis to metastasis, provides a framework to access and reassess a patient’s prognosis as the disease evolves over time and to guide management of the disease.
I am also the principal investigator of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Prostate Cancer SPORE (Specialized Program on Research Excellence) sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and Principal Investigator of the Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium, a 13-center research collaborative headquartered at Memorial Sloan Kettering and funded by the Department of Defense and the Prostate Cancer Foundation. A critical part of this effort is to design and conduct clinical trials of promising new approaches so that they are available to patients as soon as possible. Since 2006, the consortium has facilitated more than 120 new early-phase studies related to prostate cancer. Ultimately, through these clinical trials, we seek to develop more-effective treatments for prostate cancers of all stages and to discover means of prevention.
In addition to having served as Chief of the Genitourinary Oncology Service, I am the incumbent of the D. Wayne Calloway Chair in Urologic Oncology and a Professor of Medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical College. I am a recipient of the Donald S. Coffey-Prostate Cancer Foundation Physician-Scientist Award, and the Distinguished Alumnus Award. I also serve on numerous editorial and scientific advisory boards and am a reviewer for many journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Science and Translational Medicine, Lancet Oncology, and the Journal of Clinical Oncology. I have written extensively and published over 430 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals and coauthored the textbook Principals and Practice of Genitourinary Oncology.
A genitourinary (jeh-nih-toh-YOOR-ih-nayr-ee) medical oncologist is a cancer doctor who specializes in genitourinary (GU) cancers. This includes bladder, kidney, penis, prostate, and testicular cancers.
My Specialties
- Prostate Cancer and Other Genitourinary Malignancies
- Immunotherapy
Education
- MD, New York University School of Medicine
Residencies
- Medicine - Bellevue Hospital Center
Awards and Honors
- Castle Connolly: America’s Top Doctor (2024)
- Top Doctors New York Metro Area, Castle Connolly (2023)
- Giant of Cancer Care, Genitourinary Cancer, OncLive (2023)
- Castle Connolly: America's Top Doctors (2023)
- Castle Connolly: New York Magazine Top Doctors (2002-2020)
Fellowships
- Medical Oncology - Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Board Certifications
- Internal Medicine
- Medical Oncology
Insurance Information
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Contact and Location
Dr. Scher sees patients at one location.
Looking to see a doctor at a different location? See all MSK locations.
Colleagues
Doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering work as teams, with specialists from all different areas. This allows us to consider all your needs together, and to give you the best possible care.
Clinical Trials
- Clinical Trials Co-Investigated by Dr. Scher
- A Phase 2 Study of a Presurgical CD40 Agonist (2141-V11) Plus Standard Treatments in People With Prostate Cancer
- A Phase I/II Study of HPN328 Immunotherapy in People with Cancer That Makes the DLL3 Protein
- [18F]-Deoxy-D-Glucose (FDG) and [18F] Dihydro-Testosterone PET Imaging in Patients with Progressive Prostate Cancer
Memorial Sloan Kettering's doctors and scientists are constantly developing new treatments for cancer. MSK is typically running hundreds of clinical trials at a given time.
You may be able to participate in a clinical trial even if you are new to MSK. Search our online directory to find trial information and see more about who can participate.
Search clinical trialsResearch and Publications
Visit PubMed for a full listing of Dr. Scher’s journal articles. Pubmed is an online index of research papers and other articles from the US National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.
See all on PubMedPatient Reviews
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Disclosures
Doctors and faculty members often work with pharmaceutical, device, biotechnology, and life sciences companies, and other organizations outside of MSK, to find safe and effective cancer treatments, to improve patient care, and to educate the health care community.
MSK requires doctors and faculty members to report (“disclose”) the relationships and financial interests they have with external entities. As a commitment to transparency with our community, we make that information available to the public.
Howard I. Scher discloses the following relationships and financial interests:
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Elucida Oncology
Intellectual Property Rights -
Pfizer, Inc.
Professional Services and Activities -
Physicians' Education Resource
Professional Services and Activities
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Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Professional Services and Activities -
WCG Oncology
Professional Services and Activities
If you’re a patient at MSK and would like more information about your doctor’s external relationships, please talk with your doctor.
The information published here is a complement to other publicly reported data and is for a specific annual disclosure period. There may be differences between information on this and other public sites as a result of different reporting periods and/or the various ways relationships and financial interests are categorized by organizations that publish such data.
This page and data include information for a specific MSK annual disclosure period (January 1, 2023 through disclosure submission in spring 2024). This data reflects interests that may or may not still exist. This data is updated annually.
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