Lauren Byers

Lauren Averett Byers, MD, MS is an Associate Professor in the Department of Thoracic and Head and Neck Medical Oncology and an Andrew Sabin Family Fellow at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.  She completed her B.A. degree in Molecular Biology at Princeton University, her M.D. at Baylor College of Medicine, and M.S. in Patient-Based Research at the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.  She is a member of the National Cancer Institute’s Small Cell Lung Cancer (SCLC) Consortium and serves on the NCI’s Thoracic Malignancy Steering Committee and SCLC Working Group. Dr. Byers’ laboratory is focused on the molecular profiling of small cell lung cancer and the development of new treatments and predictive biomarkers, particularly as they pertain to drugs targeting DNA damage repair (DDR) and immunotherapy. As a direct extension of work completed in her lab, she has led multiple clinical trials for patients with lung cancer. In addition to an outstanding publication record of over 100 peer reviewed manuscripts, Dr. Byers has earned multiple honors including two AACR The Best of AACR Journals Awards and the MD Anderson President’s Recognition for Faculty Excellence - Research Excellence Award. As a physician-scientist, her landmark research led to the identification of fundamental differences in the molecular wiring of SCLC, including the identification of PARP1 and other DNA damage repair (DDR) proteins as novel therapeutic targets for SCLC.  Building on this, her group also identified a new role of DDR inhibitors in activating the innate immune system, whereby dramatically enhancing response to immune checkpoint blockade in preclinical models.  Recently, her team has defined molecularly distinct subtypes of SCLC that predict response to targeted therapy and immunotherapy and uncovered tumor heterogeneity as a driver of resistance using innovative, patient-derived models.