Distinguished Researcher Award

Geoffrey I. Shapiro, MD, PhD

Dr. Geoffrey Shapiro currently serves as Senior Vice President of Developmental Therapeutics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.   He received his BA in Biochemistry from Columbia University and his MD and PhD degrees from Weill Cornell Medical College and Graduate School of Medical Sciences. He completed internship, residency and Chief Residency at Beth Israel Hospital, followed by Medical Oncology Fellowship at Dana-Farber.  Between 2007-2020, he was the Director of Dana-Farber’s Early Drug Development Center, where he led early phase trials of many anticancer agents including inhibitors of signal transduction, cell cycle, DNA repair, cellular transcription and immune checkpoints, many of which have graduated to FDA approval.  He is also the Clinical Director for the DFCI Center for DNA Damage and Repair and has developed multiple PARP inhibitor combinations to augment responses and reverse acquired resistance.   Recently, he has worked to advance the polymerase theta inhibitor novobiocin into clinical development for patients with tumors harboring homologous recombination repair alterations.  He has also extensively studied the interaction of PARP inhibitors with the immune microenvironment.  Dr. Shapiro leads Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center efforts within the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Experimental Therapeutics Clinical Trials Network (ETCTN) and serves as co-Chair of the NCI Investigational Drug Steering Committee, a national advisory council for early anti-cancer drug development.   He is the recipient of several awards for his efforts in early drug development, including the Michaele C. Christian Award from the NCI in 2013, and the 2019 Targeted Anticancer Therapies Honorary Award from the European Society of Medical Oncology.