biography
Dr. Edwin Choy was raised in Los Angeles, CA and graduated from Yale College in 1993 with a B.S. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. He received his MD and PhD in 2000 from New York University School of Medicine and then completed residency training at Massachusetts General Hospital. This was followed by a fellowship in medical oncology at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital. He then completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Upon completion of his fellowship, Dr. Choy joined the faculty in the Division of Hematology Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Choy has spent more than 25 years studying the genetics and biology of cancer, and he is currently the Director of Sarcoma Research at the MGH Cancer Center. His clinical practice and research focuses exclusively in the medical management of patients with sarcomas, gastrointestinal stromal tumors, chordomas, giant cell tumors, and desmoid tumors. He works closely with a team of world class surgical, orthopedic, and radiation oncologists as well as connective tissue pathologists and radiologists to provide optimal care for his patients. He directs a clinical trials program at the Dana Farber / Harvard Cancer Center that includes over a dozen active phase I-III clinical trials. He also maintains an active scientific research program that investigates diverse areas of sarcoma therapy, ranging from the use of nanotechnology and other translational research tools aimed at developing new targeted therapies for treating cancers to preclinical studies using cell lines and animal models to better understand the molecular basis of sarcoma biology. Dr. Choy is currently Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School.
Area of Interest
1) Hematology Oncology
2) Genetics
3) Biology of cancer
top publication
1. Dai, Q., Choy, E., Chiu, V., Romano, J., Slivka, S.R., Steitz, S.A., Michaelis, S., and Philips, M.R. “Mammalian Prenylcysteine Prenyltransferase is in the Endoplasmic Reticulum.” Journal of Biological Chemistry. 1998; 273(24):15030-4.
2. Choy, E., Chiu, V.K., Silletti, J., Feoktistov, M., Morimoto, T., Michaelson, D., Ivanov, I.E., and Philips, M.R. “Endomembrane Trafficking of Ras: the CAAX Motif Targets Proteins to the ER and Golgi.” Cell. 1999;98(1):69-80..
3. Choy, E. and Philips, M.R. (2000) Expression and activity of a prenylcysteine-directed carboxyl methyltransferase. Methods of Enzymology. 325:101-14..
4. Choy, E. and Philips, M.R. (2001) Green fluorescent protein-tagged Ras proteins for intracellular localization. Methods of Enzymology. 332:50-64..
5. Reich, D., Patterson, N., Ramesh, V., De Jager, P.L., McDonald G.V., Tandon, A., Choy, E., Hu, D., Tamraz, B., Pawlikowska, L., Wassel-Fyr, C., Huntsman, S., Waliszewska, A., Rossin, E., Li, R.,. Garcia, M., Reiner, A., Ferrell, R., Cummings, S., Kwok, P., Harris, T., Zmuda, J., and Ziv, E.; Health, Aging and Body Composition (Health ABC) Study. “Admixture mapping of an allele affecting serum IL6 and IL6 receptor levels.” The American Journal of Human Genetics. 2007 Apr;80(4):716-26. Epub 2007 Mar 8.
6. Duan, Z., Weinstein, E., Ji, D., Ames, R., Choy, E., Mankin, H., and Hornick, F. “Lentiviral shRNA screen of multidrug resistant associated genes identifies PRP-4 as a new regulator of chemoresistance in human ovarian cancer.” Molecular Cancer Therapeutics. 2008 Aug;7(8):2377-85. Epub 2008 Aug 7.
7. Choy, E.*, Yelensky, R.*, Bonakdar, S., et al. “Genetic Analysis of Human Traits In-Vitro: Drug Response and Gene Expression in Lymphoblastoid Cell Lines.” PLOS Genetics, 2008 Nov;4(11):e1000287. Epub 2008 Nov 28. *equally contributing first-authors
8. Choy, E., Digumarthy, S., and Koplin, S. “A 23 year old man with cough, hoarseness, and fever.” Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital, New Engl J Med. 2009 361(21).
9. Duan, Z., Choy, E., Jimeno, J.M., del Maria Cuevas, C., Mankin, H.J., and Hornicek, F.J. “Diverse cross-resistance phenotype to ET-743 and PM00104 in multi-drug resistant cell lines selected in vitro using paclitaxel, doxorubicin or cisplatin.” Cancer Chemotherapy and Pharmacology, 2009 May;63(6):1121-9. Epub 2008 Oct 1.
10. Schwab J, Antonescu C, Boland P, Healey J, Rosenberg A, Nielsen P, Iafrate J, Delaney T, Yoon S, Choy E, Harmon D, Raskin K, Yang C, Mankin H, Springfield D, Hornicek F, Duan Z. “Combination of PI3K/mTOR inhibition demonstrates efficacy in human chordoma.” Anticancer Res; 2009 Jun;29(6):1867-71.
11. Yang C, Schwab JH, Schoenfeld AJ, Hornicek FJ, Wood KB, Nielsen GP, Choy E, Mankin H, Duan Z. “A novel target for treatment of chordoma: signal transducers and activators of transcription 3.” Mol Cancer Ther. 2009 Sep;8(9):2597-605. Epub 2009 Sep 1.
12. Duan Z, Choy E, Harmon D, Yang C, Ryu K, Schwab J, Mankin H, Hornicek FJ. “ZNF93 Increases Resistance to ET-743 (Trabectedin; Yondelis®) and PM00104 (Zalypsis®) in Human Cancer Cell lines.” PloS One, 2009 4(9):e6967.
13. De Jager PL, Baecher-Allan C, Maier LM, Arthur AT, Ottoboni L, Barcellos L, McCauley JL, Sawcer S, Goris A, Saarela J, Yelensky R, Price A, Leppa V, Patterson N, de Bakker PI, Tran D, Aubin C, Pobywajlo S, Rossin E, Hu X, Ashley CW, Choy E, Rioux JD, Pericak-Vance MA, Ivinson A, Booth