Funda Meric-bernstam MD

Funda Meric-Bernstam, MD, is Chair of the Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics, Medical Director of the Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy (IPCT), and a Professor in the Divisions of Cancer Medicine and Surgery at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Her basic and translational research focuses on molecular therapeutics, predominantly on PI3K/Akt/mTOR signaling, to delineate the mechanism of action agents targeting this pathway and the molecular alterations to identify patients who will benefit from each agent and combination therapies.

Her research seeks to identify molecular markers for predisposition testing, disease screening, and prognostic assessment, as well as markers to predict and monitor drug response. As Medical Director of the IPCT, she leads large genomic testing efforts; helped build a framework to assess actionability of genomic alterations; established a Precision Oncology Decision Support Team that provides input for actionability; launched the personalizedcancertherapy.org website, which provides information on therapeutic relevance of specific genes/variants; created databases and alert systems to facilitate accrual to genotype-selected trials; and monitors trial enrollment after genomic testing.

She leads and participates in investigator-initiated trials, cooperative group trials, and industry-sponsored trials, ranging from window-of-opportunity trials, neoadjuvant therapy trials, and Phase I/II trials in advanced cancers, as well as trials of new surgical techniques, imaging devices, and molecular diagnostics.

She joined MD Anderson as an assistant professor in 2001 after completing her research fellowship here. She completed her residency at the University of Michigan Medical Center and a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health.