Karthik Giridhar

Dr. Wander is a medical oncologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital with a clinical and translational research interest in breast cancer and cancer genomics. He serves as the Director of Translational Research for the Breast Oncology Program, where he leads a multidisciplinary team focused upon leveraging genetic and molecular sequencing results to understand how cancers become resistant to standard therapies in order to develop novel, personalized treatment strategies. Dr. Wander has published more than seventy peer-reviewed manuscripts in the field of precision medicine and continues to present educational sessions and original research nationally and internationally related to drug resistance and the development of personalized therapy for breast cancer. He is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and remains engaged in teaching medical students, residents, and fellows. He was a recipient of the 2017 Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Wong Family Translational Research Award and a 2018 recipient of the American Society of Clinical Oncology Young Investigator Award. As the Director of Precision Medicine in the Termeer Center for Targeted Therapies, he leads efforts across the MGH Cancer Center to promote novel and innovative research leveraging emerging genetic sequencing technologies to both understand resistance to cancer therapies and inform the design of new clinical trials. Dr. Wander's research has helped to shape our understanding of drug resistance in metastatic breast cancer, and he continues to lead a variety of clinical trials, across all phases of drug development, focused upon developing new, personalized treatment options for patients with breast cancer.

Dr. Giridhar is a breast oncologist at Mayo Clinic, where he also completed his fellowship training. Prior to this, he obtained his medical degree from the University of Pittsburg School of Medicine and completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Giridhar’s therapeutic trial research focuses on mechanisms of hormonal receptor resistance. His translational research focuses on the identification and development of circulating predictive biomarkers, with his lab performing studies on circulating tumor cells. He received the Conquer Cancer Foundation Young Investigator Grant and the Grand Forks Career Development Grant Award to continue work on phenotypically characterizing circulating tumor cells. He is currently an Assistant Professor in Oncology and the Breast Tumor Group Practice Chair at Mayo Clinic (Rochester).