George D. Demetri, MD, FACP
Dr.
Demetri received his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from Harvard College
and spent one year as a Rotary Fellow at the Université de Besancon,
France. After receiving his medical degree from Stanford University School
of Medicine, he completed Internal Medicine residency and Chief Residency
at the University of Washington Hospitals in Seattle. He then pursued fellowship
training in Medical Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard
Medical School, where he has served as an Attending Physician since 1989.
Dr. Demetri is the Director of the Center for Sarcoma and Bone Oncology in
the Department of Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston,
MA, and an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Demetri was trained in the laboratory of James D. Griffin, M.D. at Dana-Farber
Cancer Institute, where he studied the dysregulation of cytokine genes in tumor
cells of mesenchymal origin as well as the molecular mechanisms of gene regulation
of hematopoietic cytokines. He subsequently developed and ran a series
of clinical trials which tested a variety of recombinant hematopoietic cytokines
in the supportive care of dose-intensive chemotherapy. Dr. Demetri’s
research and clinical interests have focused on targeted therapeutic strategies
for the management of solid tumors, with a particular emphasis in sarcomas. He
and and his colleagues pioneered the concept of using thiazolidinediones to activate
the Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor-g (PPAR-g) pathway to
induce differentiation of human liposarcomas as a novel therapeutic strategy.
More recently, Dr. Demetri has played a key role in the development of the selective
tyrosine kinase inhibitors such as Imatinib mesylate (formerly known as STI571
and now known as Gleevec in North America, or Glivec in the rest of the world),
and newer agents such as SU11248 and BMS354825 as targeted therapies for Gastrointestinal
Stromal Tumors (GISTs) which express the constitutively activated enzyme product
of the KIT proto-oncogene. He is a member of the Board of Directors
of the Connective Tissue Oncology Society, co-chair of the medical advisory board
of the Sarcoma Foundation of America (www.curesarcoma.org),
and has founded an educational website on sarcomas (www.sarcoma.net).
Dr. Demetri also serves on several Editorial Boards, including Clinical Cancer
Research, as well as being the editor of the Sarcoma Section of the ASCO website
for people living with cancer (www.plwc.org).