Revolutionizing Blood Cancer Treatment With Precision Medicine: A Q&A with City of Hope’s Pamela Becker, M.D., Ph.D.

More than 100 City of Hope thought leading doctors and scientists will be present at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting from Dec. 9 to 12, 2023. Our experts are presenting data from more than 100 studies, as well as leading two scientific symposia. City of Hope physician-scientist Pamela Becker, M.D., Ph.D., professor in the Division of Leukemia, Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, will chair a Special Scientific Symposium on “Multi-Omics Driven Precision Hematology” on Monday, Dec. 11 at 2:45 p.m. in Room 30 at the San Diego Convention Center, and the third speaker in a session with a talk entitled “Precision Medicine Approaches to Rare Blood Disorders.”

Becker is working tirelessly in her lab at City of Hope, which is part of the Beckman Research Institute, to improve outcomes for patients with blood cancers by leveraging precision medicine.  

We sat down with Becker to learn about her work in precision medicine, her motivations and what she’s most excited to discuss at #ASH2023.  

You'll be at ASH 2023. What are you most excited about overall? What are you most excited about in terms of City of Hope’s presence at the conference?  

I am always excited to attend the scientific sessions and plenary session. 

Regarding City of Hope’s presence, I am particularly looking forward to a talk by my colleague Dr. Ibrahim Aldoss at the late breaking abstract session: LBA-5 Revumenib Monotherapy in Patients with Relapsed/Refractory KMT2Ar Acute Leukemia: Topline Efficacy and Safety Results from the Pivotal Augment-101 Phase 2 Study. Additionally, I am looking forward to Dr. Marcel R.M. Van den Brink leading the “Microbiota’s Impact on Stem Cell Transplant Outcomes and GVHD” scientific symposium on Sunday, Dec. 10 at 9:30 a.m. 

You’re chairing a scientific symposium at ASH 2023. What are one or two learnings you hope ASH attendees take away from the symposium?    

I am chairing and presenting in a session, Multi-Omics Driven Precision Hematology, consisting of three talks:  

• One highlighting the advancement of molecular technology and the impact on clinical trials 
• One highlighting the advancement of functional screening methods and the predictive value demonstrated in multicenter clinical trials  
• And my presentation, illustrating how testing can help us when we don’t have approved agents for rare disorders 

I hope we can communicate our excitement that modern methods in molecular biology and functional drug testing are making a tremendous impact on optimizing therapy in hematologic malignancies.   

Can you explain the impact precision medicine has on improving patient outcomes and accelerating innovation in hematology?  

My studies in relapsed/refractory acute leukemia and multiple myeloma have identified potent drugs and drug combinations and improved even post-transplant relapse survival in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Other international studies have also demonstrated responses to chosen therapies, as well as high positive and negative predictive value for newly diagnosed and relapsed patients of in vitro drug sensitivity testing.  

As a physician-scientist, you’re examining the big picture (i.e. research discoveries that benefit blood cancer patients) and the smaller picture (i.e. investigating the right therapy for each patient). Tell us more about this remarkable commitment and what you’ve learned in the process at City of Hope.  

The big picture is that patients with aggressive blood cancers have poor response to standard therapies, and a high relapse after aggressive measures including allogeneic transplant and immunotherapy. So, we need to keep driving basic research to develop novel agents, approaches and individualized therapies to meet these challenges. 

You joined City of Hope in 2022. What keeps you motivated each day to continue work?  

I derive my motivation from the patients and their drive to survive, and the extraordinary dedication of their family and friends. I am also fascinated by the science of correlating mutations and gene expression with drug sensitivity, and there is enormous excitement when the patients show benefit.  

What are you hoping to achieve in the Pamela Becker Lab at City of Hope in 2024?  

I am motivated to discover novel methods to combat leukemia, new potent drug combinations for molecular and functionally defined hematologic malignancies and to discover the basis of drug resistance and how to overcome it. We are developing a new drug-screening platform for myelodysplastic syndrome, and plan to use machine learning to identify the molecular features and risk categories that benefit from the individual drugs and drug combinations. 

How can ASH attendees engage with you during the conference? 

You can find me intermittently at City of Hope’s Booth 2204 and at our networking reception on Saturday, Dec. 9, from 7:30 to 9 p.m. in the Vista Ballroom at the Manchester Grand Hyatt. As always, I welcome anyone to reach out directly. I look forward to seeing my previous colleagues and meeting new investigators and collaborators.