Lecia V. Sequist, M.D., MPH

Dr. Sequist is originally from Michigan and studied chemistry at Cornell University. She received her doctorate from Harvard Medical School and trained in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and in hematology/oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she also received a master’s degree in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health. She joined the faculty at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in 2005 and has an active clinical and translational research career, as well as a busy practice caring for patients with lung cancer. She is currently the Landry Family Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Center for Innovation in Early Cancer Detection at Massachusetts General Hospital. She has held grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Defense and many private foundations. Dr. Sequist’s research focuses on studying targeted therapeutics for lung cancer and the use of non-invasive tests like circulating tumor cells and circulating tumor DNA to treat and detect lung cancer.

Improved diagnostics will allow the early identification of patients who have lung cancer. The Lung Cancer Interception Translational Research Team will develop an innovative multi-component diagnostic tool to calculate individualized risk of lung cancer from blood-based data. The Lung Cancer Interception Assay (LCIA) will be used in conjunction with low dose CT scans to make screening more accessible and accurate. The LCIA will select from the best blood-based assays that examine circulating tumor cells and circulating tumor DNA. The proposed research has the potential to shift how lung cancer is diagnosed and ultimately save lives.