Brian Crompton, MD

About Dr. Brian Crompton, MD

Brian Crompton, MD is a physician-scientist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the research co-director of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital’s Solid Tumor Center. Dr. Crompton’s research focuses on finding new treatment approaches for patients with Ewing sarcoma, an often devastating pediatric bone cancer whose only effective treatment employs intensive chemotherapy, surgery and radiation. Together with his research team, Dr. Crompton has developed a new approach for detecting and profiling circulating tumor DNA from liquid biopsy samples in pediatric cancers.

About Dr. Crompton’s Research

The treatment for aggressive pediatric sarcomas has remained largely unchanged for the past 15 years, with improvements in outcomes peaking at around 70%. This is partially due to a lack of useful biologic markers indicating which patients are more likely to be cured and which patients are more likely to progress or relapse after standard treatment regimens. Once patients progress or relapse, very few are cured by second-line treatment regimens.

Dr. Crompton’s research aims to validate a new assay capable of detecting tumor DNA from a simple peripheral blood draw as a surrogate for tumor burden in patients with Ewing sarcoma. This assay could help oncologists identify patients who are responding poorly to treatment early in therapy and allow for patient-specific treatment modifications that could improve outcome for patients with refractory disease.

A similar approach has been used to improve outcomes for patients with pediatric leukemia where serial bone marrow samples are collected during therapy to determine patient response. For patients with refractory leukemia, treatment intensification has significantly improved outcomes. A similar approach for pediatric Ewing sarcoma has not been possible, however, as repeated surgical biopsies are not feasible.

Since 2014, the Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation has helped fund Dr. Crompton’s research through yearly Basic Science Research Grants. With this funding, he is working to validate the measurement of circulating tumor DNA assays obtained from blood samples as a biomarker of poor outcome for patients with Ewing sarcoma. If successful, Dr. Crompton’s research could usher in a new era of risk-stratified therapy for this disease.