Dr. Elizabeth Mittendorf is the Robert and Karen Hale Distinguished Chair in Surgical Oncology and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Surgery at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She is also the Director of the Breast Immuno-Oncology program, Co-Leader of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Co-Leader of the Breast Program for the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. Dr. Mittendorf received her medical degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine where she also completed a residency in General Surgery. She then served on active duty in the United States military before completing a fellowship in Surgical Oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Mittendorf also holds a PhD in Immunology from the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston and a Masters Degree in Healthcare Management from the T. H. Chan School at Harvard University. She is board certified by the American Board of Surgery.
Dr. Mittendorf focuses her clinical and laboratory efforts on the study of breast cancer with a specific interest in immunotherapy. She has been the principle on a number of clinical protocols including the several multicenter phase II and III trials investigating the efficacy of CD8+ T cell eliciting vaccines including a phase II trial evaluating the vaccine in combination with trastuzumab which is based on preclinical data generated in her laboratory and follows a phase I trial she conducted demonstrating the combination to be safe. This trial is supported by a Breakthrough Award from the Department of Defense. Her laboratory was one of the first to show the expression of the immune checkpoint molecule PD-L1 in triple negative breast cancer. Subsequent to that, she was asked to chair the steering committee and serve as the principal investigator on the IMPassion031 trial, an international phase III trial that showed improvements in rates of pathologic complete response in early-stage triple negative breast cancer patients administered the immunotherapeutic agent Atezolizumab in combination with chemotherapy in the preoperative setting.
The current focus of her laboratory work is to investigate potential biomarkers of response and toxicity to preoperative immunotherapy plus chemotherapy and to determine the impact of that treatment on immunologic aspects of the tumor microenvironment in order to inform rational trials evaluating subsequent therapy. She is also investigating the role of an individual’s systemic immune system in predicting response to therapy and the impact of age and race on that systemic immunity. In addition to her work evaluating breast tumor immunology and immunotherapy, Dr. Mittendorf has published extensively on a multitude of subjects related to breast cancer and surgical management of the disease to include incorporation of biologic factors into staging, management of the axilla, and surgery following receipt of neoadjuvant chemotherapy.
