Sarah A. Mazzilli

Assistant Professor, Boston University School of Medicine

Biography

Investigating the molecular events associated with the progression of premalignant squamous lung lesions for targeted chemoprevention.

Lung cancer kills more than 160,000 individuals in the United States annually. Reduction of lung cancer mortality may be achieved by identification at high risk of developing cancer in addition to effective cancer preventive agents. There has been limited success of candidate chemopreventive agents as most have been assessed in pre-clinical models that do not represent the precancerous and early stage lesions that are examined in clinical chemoprevention trials for lung cancer. Clinical chemoprevention trials in lung cancer often examine the effects of agents on premalignant squamous lesions in patients at risk as such lesions can be regularly monitored by bronchoscopy. My interests and work in the Spira/ Lenburg laboratory involve developing models to aid in the understanding of the molecular events that involved in the progression of premalignant squamous lesions to frank squamous cell carcinoma to identify targets and appropriate models for intervention studies. Utilizing the computational expertise to the group. I am working to further characterize the N-Nitrosotris- (2-chloroethyl) urea chemically induced mouse model of lung squamous cell carcinoma as a model of premalignancy to be used for chemoprevention studies.

Publications

  • Published 5/22/2017

    Beane J, Mazzilli SA, Tassinari AM, Liu G, Zhang X, Liu H, Buncio AD, Dhillon SS, Platero SJ, Lenburg ME, Reid ME, Lam S, Spira AE. Detecting the Presence and Progression of Premalignant Lung Lesions via Airway Gene Expression. Clin Cancer Res. 2017 Sep 01; 23(17):5091-5100. PMID: 28533227.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 4/1/2017

    Spira A, Yurgelun MB, Alexandrov L, Rao A, Bejar R, Polyak K, Giannakis M, Shilatifard A, Finn OJ, Dhodapkar M, Kay NE, Braggio E, Vilar E, Mazzilli SA, Rebbeck TR, Garber JE, Velculescu VE, Disis ML, Wallace DC, Lippman SM. Precancer Atlas to Drive Precision Prevention Trials. Cancer Res. 2017 Apr 01; 77(7):1510-1541. PMID: 28373404.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 2/1/2016

    Campbell JD, Mazzilli SA, Reid ME, Dhillon SS, Platero S, Beane J, Spira AE. The Case for a Pre-Cancer Genome Atlas (PCGA). Cancer Prev Res (Phila). 2016 Feb; 9(2):119-24. PMID: 26839336.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 8/14/2015

    Mazzilli SA, Hershberger PA, Reid ME, Bogner PN, Atwood K, Trump DL, Johnson CS. Vitamin D Repletion Reduces the Progression of Premalignant Squamous Lesions in the NTCU Lung Squamous Cell Carcinoma Mouse Model. Cancer Prev Res (Phila). 2015 Oct; 8(10):895-904. PMID: 26276745.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 11/28/2014

    McDowell GS, Gunsalus KT, MacKellar DC, Mazzilli SA, Pai VP, Goodwin PR, Walsh EM, Robinson-Mosher A, Bowman TA, Kraemer J, Erb ML, Schoenfeld E, Shokri L, Jackson JD, Islam A, Mattozzi MD, Krukenberg KA, Polka JK. Shaping the Future of Research: a perspective from junior scientists. F1000Res. 2014; 3:291. PMID: 25653845.

    Read at: PubMed

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