Michael Egan Memorial Research Laboratory Established

BOSTON – A new research laboratory established at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center will enable cancer specialists to characterize molecular abnormalities in individual melanomas and help physicians provide more personalized treatment and clinical research approaches.

The Michael Egan Memorial Research Laboratory for Melanoma Translational Research was established in part through a $100,000 gift from BJ’s Wholesale Club. The lab will be co-directed by James Mier, MD and Ryan J. Sullivan, MD.

The lab will chiefly serve to genetically classify tumors from patients with stage III or stage IV melanoma. Specifically, analyses will be performed on patient tumor tissue to evaluate for the presence of cancer-causing mutations of genes known as B-Raf, N-Ras, C-Kit, Akt, and PTEN. This will help doctors to more accurately tailor clinical trial options to individual patients. Additionally, the genes expressed by the tumors will be profiled and certain blood-based markers will be analyzed to assess whether patients are good candidates for existing or novel immunotherapy approaches.

“We anticipate that this lab will process between 50 and 100 tissue samples per year and that these results of this genetic typing will not only direct patients to the most appropriate clinical studies, but will also help to identify novel genetic abnormalities that can serve as targets for novel treatment approaches,” said Michael B. Atkins, MD, Director of Cutaneous Oncology Program at BIDMC. “We are very grateful for BJ’s Wholesale Club’s generous donation to support vital research and treatment for patients with advanced melanoma.”

Michael Egan was the chief executive officer of TransMolecular Inc., an oncology-focused biotechnology company in Cambridge and husband of BJ’s Wholesale Club President & CEO Laura Sen, and had been a patient of Atkins.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School, and consistently ranks among the top four in National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals nationwide. BIDMC is clinically affiliated with the Joslin Diabetes Center and is a research partner of Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox. For more information, visit www.bidmc.org.