Memorial Sloan Kettering medical oncologist Joseph Chan

Joseph Minhow Chan, MD, PhD

Thoracic Medical Oncologist

Areas of Expertise

Conditions I Treat

  • Lung cancer
  • Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)
  • Small cell lung cancer (SCLC)
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Dr. Chan's Office Information
Languages: English
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Get to Know Me

I am a board-certified medical oncologist specializing in the treatment of lung cancer and a physician-scientist specializing in computational biology and single-cell genomics, with a focus on small cell transformation in lung and prostate cancer. I see patients at the David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

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I work closely with a dedicated group of doctors, including world-renowned lung cancer experts, nurses and nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and support staff to deliver the highest-quality care possible. In addition to medical management, I strive to communicate with my patients and their families to ease the burden of uncertainty. Whether you are a patient or a family member, any experience with cancer can be scary. So much of the fear associated with cancer is fear of the unknown, and I will take the time to discuss the rationale and expectations for any diagnostic tests or treatments so that we can banish this fear as much as possible.

As a physician-scientist and computational biologist conducting cancer research at Sloan Kettering Institute (SKI), I aim to gain a better understanding of lineage plasticity, a poorly understood mechanism of therapeutic resistance and metastasis in cancer. A key example of plasticity in cancer is when adenocarcinoma escapes pressure from targeted therapies by transforming into a more aggressive disease called small cell cancer. This phenomenon arises in many different cancer types, including lung, prostate, bladder, uterine, cervical, gastrointestinal tract, and head and neck, among others. I also strive to use single-cell technologies to understand how lineage plasticity in lung and prostate cancer affects tumor progression, and how the surrounding microenvironment can impact this process. The overarching goal of this research is to identify a new class of drugs that can reverse plasticity, thereby restoring the disease’s original sensitivity to targeted therapies.

I completed my undergraduate studies in biomedical computation at Stanford University, my MD/PhD at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, my residency in internal medicine at Weill Cornell Medical Center at NewYork-Presbyterian, and, finally, my fellowship in oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. For my PhD work, I studied computational biology and developed new methods to model the topology of viral evolution and identify gene fusions in cancer. These methods supported the identification of a class of recurrent FGFR-TACC fusions in brain cancer; of note, this was the first time that this mutation was found in any cancer. Now, this mutation is an FDA-approved drug target in bladder and gallbladder cancer.

What I Do at MSK

I'm a thoracic medical oncologist, which is a cancer doctor who specializes in thoracic (thor-A-sik) cancers. These are cancers that have to do with the chest, including lung, tracheal (windpipe), and thymic (thymus) cancers.

  • Assistant Attending Physician
Areas of Expertise

Conditions I Treat

  • Lung cancer
  • Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)
  • Small cell lung cancer (SCLC)
Education & Honors

Education

  • MD, Columbia University
  • PhD, Columbia University

Residencies

  • Internal Medicine, Weill Cornell at NewYork-Presbyterian

Fellowships

  • Medical Oncology, Memorial Sloan Kettering

Board Certifications

  • Internal Medicine
  • Medical Oncology

Awards and Honors

  • Clinical Investigator Award, K08CA259161, National Cancer Institute (2021-Current)
  • Young Investigator Award, American Society of Clinical Oncology & Conquer Cancer Foundation (2021-Current)
  • Lung Cancer Research Fellowship, American Association for Cancer Research (2021)
  • Harborside Endowed Merit Award, American Society of Clinical Oncology & Conquer Cancer Foundation (2021)
  • World Conference on Lung Cancer Early Career Award, International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (2021)
  • Gerry Fellowship, Alan and Sandra Gerry Metastasis and Tumor Ecosystems Center (2020-2021)
  • Distinguished Young Investigator Award, EGFR Resisters (2020)
  • T32 Investigational Cancer Therapeutics Training Program Grant, Memorial Sloan Kettering (2018-2020)

Insurance Information

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Contact and Location

Dr. Chan sees patients at one location.

Office Phone
Location
New York, NY
David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
530 East 74th Street New York NY 10021
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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.

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Clinical Trials

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Find a Clinical Trial for You

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.

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Research and Publications

Chan JM, Quintanal-Villalonga Á, Gao VR, Xie Y, Allaj V, Chaudhary O, Masilionis I, Egger J, Chow A, Walle T, Mattar M, Yarlagadda DVK, Wang JL, Uddin F, Offin M, Ciampricotti M, Qeriqi B, Bahr A, de Stanchina E, Bhanot UK, Lai WV, Bott MJ, Jones DR, Ruiz A, Baine MK, Li Y, Rekhtman N, Poirier JT, Nawy T, Sen T, Mazutis L, Hollmann TJ, Pe’er D, Rudin CM. Signatures of plasticity, metastasis, and immunosuppression in an atlas of human small cell lung cancer. Cancer Cell. 2021 Nov 8;39(11):1479-1496.e18. doi: 10.1016/j.ccell.2021.09.008. Epub 2021 Oct 14. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8628860.

Offin M, Chan JM, Tenet M, Rizvi HA, Shen R, Riely GJ, Rekhtman N, Daneshbod Y, Quintanal-Villalonga A, Penson A, Hellmann MD, Arcila ME, Ladanyi M, Pe’er D, Kris MG, Rudin CM, Yu HA. Concurrent RB1 and TP53 Alterations Define a Subset of EGFR-Mutant Lung Cancers at risk for Histologic Transformation and Inferior Clinical Outcomes. J Thorac Oncol. 2019 Oct;14(10):1784-1793. doi: 10.1016/j.jtho.2019.06.002. Epub 2019 Jun 19. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6764905.

Chan JM, Carlsson G, Rabadan R. Topology of viral evolution. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013 Nov 12;110(46):18566-71. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1313480110. Epub 2013 Oct 29. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3831954.

Singh D, Chan JM, Zoppoli P, Niola F, Sullivan R, Castano A, Liu EM, Reichel J, Porrati P, Pellegatta S, Qiu K, Gao Z, Ceccarelli M, Riccardi R, Brat DJ, Guha A, Aldape K, Golfinos JG, Zagzag D, Mikkelsen T, Finocchiaro G, Lasorella A, Rabadan R, Iavarone A. Transforming fusions of FGFR and TACC genes in human glioblastoma. Science. 2012 Sep 7;337(6099):1231-5. doi: 10.1126/science.1220834. Epub 2012 Jul 26. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3677224.

Publications on PubMed

Visit PubMed for a full listing of Dr. Chan’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.

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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.

Joseph Minhow Chan discloses the following relationships and financial interests:

  • Mirati Therapeutics
    Equity
  • Sonata Therapeutics, Inc.
    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.

Learn more about MSK’s COI policies here. For questions regarding MSK’s COI-related policies and procedures, email MSK’s Compliance Office at [email protected].


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