ASCI / Young Physician-Scientist Awards, 2021
The Young Physician-Scientist Awards (YPSA) recognize physician-scientists who are early in their first faculty appointment and have made notable achievements in their research.
About the awardee
Tina Cascone, MD, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Thoracic, Head and Neck Medical Oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX. She received her degree in medicine from the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli (former Second University of Naples), in Naples, Italy. Dr. Cascone earned her doctorate degree in Medical and Surgical Oncology and Clinical Immunology at the same University while performing the experimental studies of her thesis at MD Anderson Cancer Center. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at the Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO, and her medical oncology fellowship at MD Anderson Cancer Center. In 2017, Dr. Cascone became an instructor in the Advanced Scholar Program at MD Anderson Cancer Center. In 2018, she joined the faculty as a tenure track assistant professor in the Department of Thoracic, Head and Neck Medical Oncology.
Dr. Cascone leads a basic and translational independent research laboratory with state-of-the-art equipment acquired through a highly competitive University of Texas Rising Stars Award. She was also selected into the physician-scientist program at MD Anderson. The overarching goal of Dr. Cascone’s research program is to identify mechanisms of response and resistance to immune-based therapies and develop novel therapeutic strategies to improve the cure rates of patients with operable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Dr. Cascone is the principal investigator of investigator-initiated and sponsored international clinical studies investigating the role of perioperative immunotherapies for patients with operable NSCLC. She also leads a comprehensive immunogenomic profiling effort at MD Anderson that studies murine- and patient-derived samples treated with neoadjuvant therapies to identify the dynamic changes in immune cell phenotypes and properties in response to therapy.