Corey Speers, MD, PhD

About

Corey Speers, MD, PhD is an Associate Professor and Vice Chair of Research as well as Director of the Phase I clinical trials program in the Department of Radiation Oncology. He is also a co-director of the Breast Oncology Program at the University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center and a Hennessy Hyland Master Clinician in Immunotherapy and New Drug Development. Dr. Speers was previously an Associate Professor with tenure at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center and Associate Residency Program Director in the Department of Radiation Oncology. He completed his medical and graduate degrees in the MSTP program at Baylor College of Medicine and MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX before completing his residency and Holman Pathway training at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Clinically, Dr. Speers is an internationally renowned expert on the management of breast cancer, and focuses his clinical interests on the most aggressive forms of breast cancer. He has been an invited lecturer in dozens of countries including England, Scotland, Sweden, Korea, Thailand, and China as well as throughout the United States. His research interests explore the biology of aggressive breast cancers, including inflammatory and triple-negative breast cancer. His research lab has utilized kinome screens to identify novel targets for the treatment of aggressive breast cancers, including triple-negative breast cancer. The lab is also interested in the mechanisms of treatment resistance that include modulation of breast tumor initiating cells, breast cancer stem cells, and understanding novel layers of cancer biology, including the role of long non-coding RNA and the immune system in triple-negative breast cancer.

His laboratory is also interested in “bench to bedside” research that includes basic mechanistic studies, translational pre-clinical studies, and clinical research and he currently holds grants from the NIH, NCI, DOD, BCRF, Komen for the Cure Foundation, and the Hope Foundation. His interest in targeted therapies include PARP-inhibitors, CDK 4/6 inhibitors, and androgen receptor antagonists as agents for radiosensitization. These preclinical studies have been foundational to completed or open clinical trials evaluating these combinations in women with aggressive forms of breast cancer, and he is currently the PI or Co-PI on 3 international clinical trials in breast cancer. In addition, he is an internationally known expert on molecularly based biomarkers for radiation treatment decisions in breast cancer. He holds 4 patents and helped develop the only predictive biomarker genomic signatures (POLAR and ARTIC) for breast cancer radiation efficacy.

He has won numerous clinical, teaching, and research awards from AACR, ASCO, ASTRO, and RSNA, sits on multiple cooperative group and professional society’s committees and study sections, and is an associate editor for breast cancer for the International Journal of Radiation, Biology, and Physics.