Dr Heather Wakelee

Dr. Heather Wakelee is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Oncology at Stanford University in California where she is the co-leader of the lung cancer disease management group. She attended Princeton University as an undergraduate with a major in molecular biology and attended medical school at Johns Hopkins before returning to her native California for internal medicine residency and fellowship training in medical oncology at Stanford University. Dr. Wakelee’s focus is in clinical research in lung cancer patients. She has a particular interest in anti-angiogenesis agents. She is the principal investigator of the ongoing international lung cancer intergroup trial E1505 that is investigating the potential role of bevacizumab in addition to adjuvant chemotherapy for resected early stage non-small cell lung cancer. Dr. Wakelee has led several investigator initiated protocols looking at other uses of bevacizumab in NSCLC as well as playing a central role in clinical trials with the anti-angiogenic agents sorafenib, enzastaurin, XL647, XL184 and aflibercept (VEGF-TRAP). As part of the developmental therapeutics group at Stanford she is involved in phase I trials of many other exciting novel compounds, with an eye towards further development of them in lung cancer. Additionally, she has research interests in sex differences in lung cancer and the issue of lung cancer in never smokers. Her collaborations with the Northern California Cancer Center have led to multiple publications on the topic of lung cancer in never-smokers and a better epidemiologic understanding of the disease. Ongoing efforts included a pilot trial that will hopefully lead to a large case-control study in Northern California looking at lung cancer in never-smokers, particularly women.