1). Interplay between germline and somatic processes in cancer
2). Genome-directed diagnosis of cancer tissue of origin
3). Oncogene mutant dosage as a prognostic and predictive biomarker
4). Quantifying clinical benefit to cancer therapy via cell-free DNA profiling
5). Integrated DNA and RNA biomarkers of response to cancer therapy
Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
The focus of the Berger laboratory is to use novel computational and experimental techniques to characterize the spectrum of genetic mutations in human tumors in order to identify biomarkers of cancer progression and drug response.
The identification of molecular drivers of cancer and the development of targeted therapies for these drivers offer hope for better outcomes for patients with cancer. Global efforts to comprehensively characterize the genomes of all major cancer types continue to reveal new genetic alterations with implications for tumor biology, prognosis, and treatment. Using massively parallel next-generation DNA sequencing, we are developing and applying methods of profiling individual tumor specimenspatient biospecimens for somatic base mutations and other genomicand inherited alterations that may influence response to therapy. Our research falls into two main categories: technology development and biomarker discovery.
Biography
Michael Berger, PhD, holds the Elizabeth and Felix Rohatyn Chair and is Co-Director of the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Center for Molecular Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He is also the inaugural Chief of the Clinical Computational Diagnostics Service in the MSK Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine. His laboratory has developed experimental and computational methods to characterize the genetic makeup of individual cancers, including MSK-IMPACT, a comprehensive FDA-authorized tumor sequencing panel that been used to profile more than 150,000 tumors from patients treated at MSK. The resulting data have enabled the characterization of somatic and germline biomarkers across all cancer types and the identification of mutations associated with clonal hematopoiesis. Dr. Berger also led the development of a clinically validated plasma cell-free DNA assay, MSK-ACCESS, which his laboratory is using to explore tumor evolution, acquired drug resistance, and occult metastatic disease. Most recently, Dr. Berger’s team developed and deployed a clinical RNA sequencing test, MSK-TARGET, to identify changes in gene expression and immune cell populations. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Physics from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in Biophysics from Harvard University.
Distinctions:
2025 AACR Team Science Award (team leader)
Elizabeth and Felix Rohatyn Chair for Junior Faculty
Louise and Allston Boyer Young Investigator Award for Clinical Research
Selected Publications:
Zehir, A., Benayed, R., Shah, R. H., Syed, A., Middha, S., Kim, H. R., Srinivasan, P., Gao, J., Chakravarty, D., Devlin, S. M., Hellmann, M. D., Barron, D. A., Schram, A. M., Hameed, M., Dogan, S., Ross, D. S., Hechtman, J. F., DeLair, D. F., Yao, J., Mandelker, D. L., … Berger, M. F. (2017). Mutational landscape of metastatic cancer revealed from prospective clinical sequencing of 10,000 patients.Nature medicine, 23(6), 703–713.
Miller, A. M., Shah, R. H., Pentsova, E. I., Pourmaleki, M., Briggs, S., Distefano, N., Zheng, Y., Skakodub, A., Mehta, S. A., Campos, C., Hsieh, W. Y., Selcuklu, S. D., Ling, L., Meng, F., Jing, X., Samoila, A., Bale, T. A., Tsui, D. W. Y., Grommes, C., Viale, A., … Mellinghoff, I. K. (2019). Tracking tumour evolution in glioma through liquid biopsies of cerebrospinal fluid.Nature, 565(7741), 654–658. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-0882-3
