Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD

Roy Herbst, MD, PhD, is chief of medical oncology and a pioneer of personalized medicine and immunotherapy whose goal is to cure lung cancer.

Dr. Herbst, who is also associate director for translational science at Yale School of Medicine and Yale Cancer Center, says the way to a cure is understanding how lung cancer grows and finding new targets and new immunologic ways to enhance therapy to treat it. He adds that understanding and preventing metastasis and treatment resistance—two factors that often result in cancer fatality—is critical to our ability to increase survivorship rates.

“A favorite part of my job is leading and mentoring the physicians and teams that work together to treat patients with cancer,” he says. “We have built integrated clinical and research programs at multiple care centers around the state to deliver the best care to patients. I really like bringing the group together and building teams.”

Dr. Herbst says he has been interested in cancer from an early age. “As an undergraduate at Yale, I worked in the very same hallway where I work now, on the emerging science of electrobiology that impacts how cells grow and divide, which is the very basis of cancer,” he says. “I also enjoy clinical medicine, where I can help patients and blend science and cancer care.”

He says the best part of his job is witnessing new drugs helping patients improve. “That really just makes my day to see people benefit from the treatments we have developed, some of them here at Yale,” he says.

To reassure patients, Dr. Herbst says he tells patients that they “have come to a place where we are devoted to their care—to the quality of their care and the innovation of their care—and that, here at Yale, they will have the very best treatments and multimodality care to help their disease.”