I am the Chief of Breast Surgery and Co-leader of the Breast Cancer Program at the Cleveland Clinic. I have a joint appointment in Surgery and Cancer Biology. I lead clinical trials and am PI of a translational research laboratory that studies circulating tumor cells in breast cancer and rare, aggressive diseases such as inflammatory breast cancer. I have a position that allows me to devote 40% of my effort to cancer research studies. My lab focuses on translational research related to breast cancer tumor biology and biomarkers of prediction of response to therapy. We recently established a patient derived xenograft model for inflammatory breast cancer. Much of my research program is aimed at studying circulating tumor cells and circulating tumor DNA as a liquid biopsy in cancer. I have had foundation grant and industry support for my research. I have served as an I-SPY2 clinical trials investigator for more than 10 years, including serving as PI at two institutions. My lab has relocated to the Cleveland Clinic and we look forward to building a robust research program in clinical-translational research to benefit the large patient population treated at our institution.
Research Information
Research Interests
The Lang laboratory is a breast cancer translational research laboratory (we study very clinically relevant features of breast cancer biology and treatment). We are interested in studying liquid biopsies - minimally-invasive blood draws used to provide information about tumor burden, screening/detecting tumor in patients not known to have cancer, and using liquid biopsies to rationally decide on therapeutics for cancer patients. We can sequence tumor DNA or cells circulating in the blood of cancer patients and study the whole genome (DNA or RNA) to better understand tumor biology. We are also interested in inflammatory breast cancer - one of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer. We have developed a mouse model to study promising new cancer therapies by taking a piece of an aggressive cancer and surgically implanting it in mice as avatars of human cancer biology. Dr. Lang leads clinical trials and laboratory research aimed at improving outcomes for breast cancer patients. She is a physician-scientist who has a busy clinical practice and leads innovative cancer research studies focused on breast cancer.