Lisa A. Carey MD, FASCO

Dr. Carey, Richardson, and Marilyn Jacobs Preyer Distinguished Professor in Breast Cancer Research are board-certified in both Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology. Her clinical interest is in breast cancer, and she is the Medical Director of the UNC Breast Center, the Chief of Hematology/Oncology, and the Physician-in-Chief of the UNC North Carolina Cancer Hospital. Dr. Carey's research interests focus upon breast cancer, including examination of different subtypes of breast cancer, evaluation of new chemotherapy agents in early breast cancer, and examination of tumor characteristics that predict response to therapy.

Dr. Carey has worked extensively with scientists across Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and the UNC Gillings Global School of Public Health to better understand and characterize the molecular subtypes of breast cancer so that we may develop better prevention and treatment strategies. With Drs. Perou and Millikan identified the elevated risk of the poor-prognosis basal-like breast cancer subtype in young African-American women. She is a worldwide expert in triple-negative breast cancer and led the first trial looking at a new drug regimen in this breast cancer subtype. She is a Members of the UNC Breast Center who has a long commitment to improving the treatment of early (nonmetastatic) breast cancer and has been early investigators in the use of neoadjuvant, or preoperative, chemotherapy for breast cancer. In part based upon work performed at UNC, we now know that women do just as well if their chemotherapy is given before surgery as after, however, the chemotherapy-first approach means that they are more likely to save their breast. In addition, with preoperative therapy, it is possible to tell if the drugs are working since the tumor is still measurable when the chemotherapy is given first.

Dr. Carey's clinical research program investigates new drugs and combination of drugs in preoperative therapy. As part of this neoadjuvant chemotherapy program, she is involved in several studies, including a multi-institutional trial sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, of genetic and molecular markers in breast cancer as predictors of response to chemotherapy, and she is the lead investigator of a national study of new drug combinations in HER2-positive breast cancer. Dr. Carey is also the principal investigator of a highly collaborative study examining genes that might interact with other genes or with the environment to impact a woman's risk of developing breast cancer.