Jeremy Durack

Jeremy Durack
About Jeremy Durack

Prostate cancer diagnosis and precision medicine treatment decisions currently rely on results from invasive biopsy procedures. Current biopsy methods do not ensure that the quality of the sample collected is sufficient for diagnosis and molecular and genomic characterization.

Dr. Jeremy Durack is developing a unique biopsy instrument that uses specialized integrated spectroscopy to differentiate tumor from normal prostate tissues and to assess the quantity of collected DNA.

This instrument will enable interventional radiologists to assess the quality of biopsies as they are being performed, which will ultimately lead to a reduction in the number of cores that need to be taken for each patient, thereby improving patient safety and guaranteeing the sufficiency of sample quality for genomic characterization.

What this means for patients: Prostate cancer patient diagnosis and treatment decisions rely on results gained from invasive biopsies. Current procedures do not ensure that the biopsy specimen is sufficient. Dr. Durack will develop an instrument that will immediately inform interventional radiologists when sufficient biopsy specimens have been collected, thus accelerating and improving diagnosis and treatment decisions and reducing patient morbidity.

Award

2014 Joshua J. Harris-PCF Young Investigator

Jeremy Durack, MD, MS

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Mentor

Howard Scher, MD

Proposal Title

Rapid Spectroscopic Assessment of Targeted Prostate Cancer Biopsy Sufficiency at the Point-of-Care