J Chad Brenner, PhD, MSE

Dr. Brenner is an associate professor in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Department of Pharmacology and Center for Computational Medicine & Bioinformatics. He is also a member of the U-M Rogel Cancer Center and serves as director of the U-M Program in Cellular and Molecular Biology, the Otolaryngolocy Clinical Laboratory (CLIA) and the Head & Neck Oncology Progam. His research lab, the Michigan Otolaryngology and Translational Oncology lab (MiOTO), aims to identify new diagnostic tests and precision medicine therapies for cancer patients. More recently, Dr. Brenner has developed blood and urine-based liquid biopsy tests that are used to support the clinical management of head and neck cancer patients globally.

In addition to receiving his undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Michigan, Dr. Brenner also received a master's in engineering in bioelectrical engineering and a doctorate in cellular and molecular biology. He was awarded the Lindau-Nobel award for his seminal discovery and series of publications describing the therapeutic vulnerability of prostate cancers to PARP inhibitors in his thesis, this discovery has made a profound impact for cancer patients as PARP inhibitors are now widely used to treat advanced prostate cancer.

• The primary goal of my research program is to develop tools that promote a shift to remote and virtual medicine paradigms. I believe these tests will reduce health care disparities, improve clinical access and reduce health care costs at both the patient and system levels. My team has developed at-home urine-based tests for head and neck cancer that we are now studying in the context of early detection of cancer, real time monitoring of response to therapy and early detection of recurrence. I envision working to expand institutional efforts to deliver at-home health care through expanding our urine-based platform for at home testing in the future.

• The second goal of my research program is to improve our understanding of precision health genomics and policy. Currently we are working to understand relationships between population genotypes (e.g. APOBEC SNPs), tumor genomics and cancer survival outcomes. We have worked to develop informatics tools to understand these relationships so that we can better understand the influence of genetics on cancer phenotypes. We have also worked to develop policy around the use of population-based genetics information in research, clinical practice and commercialization.

• The third goal of my research program is to develop novel therapeutic strategies for cancer. My previous work led to the advancement of PARP inhibitors as standard of care in advanced prostate cancers, and more recent work has led to testing of novel combination strategies in head and neck cancer clinical trials. My team is advancing a new pan-cancer CLIA test which will test the responsiveness of patient surgical specimens to cancer therapeutics. We are particularly interested in understanding how cell state transitions contribute the therapeutic resistance. The approach is to develop functional platforms that enable early identification of effective and non-effective therapies.