Karen L. Reckamp is a Professor of Medicine and Director of
the Division of Medical Oncology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She received a
Master’s degree in Clinical Investigation from the Department of Biomathematics
at UCLA. Due to her leadership abilities and formal training in clinical
research, she has been appointed to serve as the Associate Director of Clinical
Research for the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute (SOCCI). Her
research focus is the development of novel therapies and biomarkers for lung
cancer with an emphasis on targeted therapies. She is established as a leader
in clinical investigation, performing hypothesis-driven translational research
in thoracic oncology. She leads collaborations with researchers across
disciplines, programs, and institutions. She works with lung cancer researchers
across the country as a part of the Lung Cancer SPORE program to lead
multi-institutional trials to evaluate targeted therapy in thoracic oncology.
She has developed and led clinical trials as PI in our NCI-funded U01 Phase I
and N01 Phase II Consortiums. She is an active member of the Southwest Oncology
Group (SWOG) and the Lung Cancer Committee. She also represented the City of
Hope on the National Comprehensive Cancer Network Guidelines Committee to shape
treatment guidelines in thoracic malignancies from 2008 until 2020.
Kamya Sankar is a medical oncologist of the Thoracic Medical
Oncology Disease Group at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She received her BS
degree in Biochemistry and Biophysics from the University of Michigan, and her MD
from Wayne State University School of Medicine. She completed her Internal
Medicine residency at Northwestern University in 2016 and her Hematology/Oncology
fellowship at the University of Michigan in 2022 where she was also appointed
Chief Fellow. Her primary research interest involves investigating the liver
tumor microenvironment and its role in restricting immunotherapy efficacy to
inform novel treatment strategies. She received the prestigious ASCO Conquer
Cancer Foundation Career Development Award in 2023 to support her research. She
is focused on translational and clinical cancer research by developing and
expanding therapeutic clinical trials and advancing biomarker development, with
the ultimate goal of improving outcomes of patients with advanced lung cancers.
