We are very pleased to announce the addition of Dr. Gregory (Greg) Cote, a leading medical oncologist in the Center for Sarcoma and Connective Tissue Oncology and Stephan L. Harris Center for Chordoma Care at Massachusetts General Hospital, to our Medical Advisory Board (MAB).
Dr. Cote brings to the MAB extensive experience designing and carrying out clinical trials for sarcoma patients, having served as the principal investigator for 16 sarcoma and phase I trials. Additionally, Dr. Cote collaborates with pathology and molecular biology colleagues on preclinical and translational studies to identify promising therapies to take into clinical trials.
Notably, Dr. Cote has spearheaded studies evaluating a new class of targeted therapies called EZH2 inhibitors in chordoma and other sarcomas. Supported by a 2014 seed grant from the Chordoma Foundation, Dr. Cote’s research to explore the role of the epigenetic tumor suppressor SWI/SNF complex in chordoma helped pave the way for including chordoma patients in an ongoing clinical trial with an EZH2 inhibitor called tazemetostat.
“Dr. Cote has been a long-time partner of the Foundation and a strong advocate for bringing promising therapies from the lab into the clinic. With a growing pipeline of therapies moving toward clinical trials, Dr. Cote will add valuable depth to the clinical trial expertise on our MAB.” – Josh Sommer, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Chordoma Foundation
Dr. Cote received his MD and PhD at Boston University School of Medicine, did his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Hematology/Oncology fellowship training at Dana-Farber/Partners Cancer Care. His clinical interests include sarcomas and novel drug development.
You can watch Dr. Cote’s presentation “Drug therapy for chordoma: The role of clinical trials and personalized medicine” from the 2016 International Chordoma Community Conference on the Foundation’s YouTube channel
“In all cancers, we need to be smarter about matching patients to trials, but there are unique challenges for rare cancers like chordoma. While it is still early days for genetic testing, we’re on the road to being able to take a more personalized approach to targeting and treating individual mutations in a patient’s tumor, and I am thrilled to be joining the Medical Advisory Board at this exciting time in chordoma science.” – Dr. Greg Cote