Meet the 2020 KACF Surgical Fellow, Sonia Cohen, MD, PhD

Sonia Cohen, MD, PhD, is the current KACF Surgery fellow through 2020, coming to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center after 5 years in the Massachusetts General Hospital Surgery Residency Program. She will return to the Massachusetts General Hospital in August 2020 to start her practice in surgical oncology with a focus on soft tissue sarcomas.

 

During fellowship Dr. Cohen has had a great research mentor in KACF friend Dr. Aimee Crago and is working with Dr. Crago on desmoid fibromatosis. Desmoid tumors present a particular management challenge – while some patients will have rapid growth of tumors and poor outcomes, desmoid tumors in other patients will stabilize and even regress on their own over time. Ideally, interventions such as surgery would be used only in those patients at highest risk of progression to maximize the benefit while minimizing the risks of treatment. Dr. Cohen’s current goals for this research are to identify clinicopathologic, radiographic and biologic predictors of progression in individuals with desmoid fibromatosis so that therapy can be tailored to patients at the highest risk of progression. Dr. Cohen’s future research program will use a similar approach to better understand and treat other sarcoma subtypes.