Academic History
Cynthia X. Ma, MD, PhD is a co-leader of the Breast Cancer Focus Group at the Siteman Cancer Center, as well as a Clinical Director of the Breast Cancer Program and a Professor in the Division of Oncology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO.
Prof. Ma received her MD from Beijing Medical University in Beijing, China, before completing her PhD in Developmental Biology at the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH. She carried out a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Cincinnati and an internal medicine residency at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, NC, before completing a fellowship in hematology and medical oncology at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN.
Prof. Ma is an active member of several committees and societies including the AACR Breast Cancer Research Grants Scientific Review Committee and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. She sits on the editorial boards for Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, Clinical Breast Cancer, and Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Speaking on the pharmacogenomics of anticancer agents, predictive biomarkers, and developmental therapeutics in breast cancer
Prof. Ma’s research is focussed on pre-clinical and early phase clinical investigations in developing molecular therapeutics for breast cancer. She has designed and conducted several trials in genomic biomarker focused breast cancer populations. Prof. Ma led the Phase III Alliance trials, which aimed to validate neoadjuvant biomarkers predictive of long-term outcomes and to evaluate neoadjuvant therapy in estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) and HER2 negative (HER2-) breast cancer patients resistant to endocrine therapy (ET). Aside from clinical trial development, Prof. Ma’s laboratory studies clinical specimens and patient-derived xenograft models to investigate biomarkers of responsiveness for targeted agents.
