Razelle Kurzrock

Molecular Cancer Therapeutics Reviews Editor

Dr. Razelle Kurzrock has served as a senior editor for Molecular Cancer Therapeutics since 2007 and has taken up the new role of Reviews Editor. She is known for founding and building the largest Phase 1 clinical trials department in the nation while at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. A central theme of that program was the precision medicine strategy, embodied in a protocol called PREDICT (Profile-Related Evidence Determining Individualized Cancer Therapy).

At Moores Cancer Center at University of California San Diego, Dr. Kurzrock’s charge is heading its newly established Center for Personalized Cancer Therapy. This center focuses on genomically-driven therapy as well as precision immunotherapy, especially in rare cancers. Dr. Kurzrock is a global leader in personalized medicine, bringing the first transcriptomic study to the clinic in an international setting spanning five countries (WINTHER), as well as the first study of individually customized combination therapy (IPREDICT).

Dr. Kurzrock received her MD from the University of Toronto, Canada. She has over 800 PubMed publications, an H-index of 122, has been named to the lists of most highly cited scientists in the world and the 25 world leaders in precision medicine, and she has a uniquely strong record of competitive funding with more than 100 million dollars in lifetime funding.

Importantly, Dr. Kurzrock has a special interest in Rare Cancers, a large unmet need. Dr. Kurzrock founded a Rare Tumor Clinic at UCSD and heads the Early Therapeutics and Rare Cancers Committee for the NCI cooperative group SWOG. The effort that Dr. Kurzrock is most passionate about is changing the course of disease for patients with cancer. Patients are at the heart of her work.

Dr. Kurzrock has four children, three dogs, and lives with her husband, Dr. Philip Cohen, a dermatologist, in San Diego, CA.

• PD-L1 Expression as a Predictive Biomarker in Cancer Immunotherapy
  Patel SP and Kurzrock R. Molecular Cancer Therapeutics April 2015.
• Tumor Mutational Burden as an Independent Predictor of Response to Immunotherapy in Diverse Cancers
  Goodman AM…Kurzrock R. Molecular Cancer Therapeutics November 2017.
• Next Generation Sequencing of Tissue and Circulating Tumor DNA: The UC San Diego Moores Center for Personalized Cancer Therapy Experience with Breast Malignancies
  Shatsky R…Kurzrock R. Molecular Cancer Therapeutics May 2019.
• High Tumor Mutational Burden Correlates with Longer Survival in Immunotherapy-Naïve Patients with Diverse Cancers
  Riviere P…Kurzrock R. Molecular Cancer Therapeutics October 2020.
• Survival Implications of the Relationship between Tissue versus Circulating Tumor DNA TP53 Mutations – A Perspective from a Real-World Precision Medicine Cohort
  Rosenberg S…Kurzrock R. Molecular Cancer Therapeutics December 2020.