Biography
Dr. Karen Antman, an internationally recognized expert on breast cancer, mesotheliomas and sarcomas, is Provost of the Medical Campus and Dean of Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine since 2005. Dr. Antman previously served as Deputy Director for Translational and Clinical Sciences at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (2004-5) and before that as Wu Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology and Director of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, where she also co-directed the cancer care service line at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Antman was voted 1993 Senior Faculty Teacher of the Year by medical residents. She also served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School from 1979 to 1993, and had hospital appointments at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
Based on her group’s translational research, Dr Antman developed now standard regimens for the treatment of sarcomas and mesotheliomas as well as regimens for breast cancer and supportive care of patients receiving chemotherapy including pharmacology, growth factors and mobilization of peripheral blood derived stem cells for blood and marrow transplant. Dr. Antman also is outspoken on public health policy issues. She has written extensively about impediments to clinical research on cancer, and she has testified before Congress on the need for federal research dollars to support cancer research with articles in the medical literature (as well as Vogue and Readers Digest). She has written more than 300 journal papers and edited five textbooks and monographs, many with multiple editions.
She is a member of PBK and the Institute of Medicine. She has served as President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in 1994-5, the American Society of Blood and Marrow Transplant in 1996-7, and the American Association for Cancer Research in 2003-4.
She has more than 300 publications and is the editor of 5 textbooks and monographs (Asbestos related malignancies, Sarcomas of Bone and Soft Tissue, High-dose cancer therapy: pharmacology, hematopoietins and stem cells (3 editions), and Molecular Targeting in Oncology).
She serves on the Administration Board of the American Association of Medical Colleges Council of Deans, the Journal of the American Medical Association Oversight Committee, the International Editorial Board of Lancet, and on the board of the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG). She has served as an associate editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, and on the Council of the National Institutes of Health’s Fogarty International Center.
She has published reviews and editorials on medical policy and the impact of research funding and managed care on American clinical research and testified before congressional subcommittees on eight occasions on National Institutes of Health (NIH) appropriations and medical policy.