David F. Stern, PhD

Dr. Stern earned a BS in Biology at MIT in 1976. He received a PhD in Biology in 1983 at University of California, San Diego, and the Salk Institute with S.I.T. Kennedy and Bart Sefton for dissertation research that elucidated the coronavirus lytic cycle. Dr. Stern returned to R.A. Weinberg’s lab at the MIT Cancer Center and Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in 1983. There, Dr. Stern’s postdoctoral work pioneered analysis of neu/ErbB2/HER2, an important human oncogene. As a Yale Pathology faculty member since 1988, Dr. Stern’s research has focused on the roles of eleven growth factors and four receptors of the EGF family in malignant transformation, especially in breast cancer, and he has also made significant contributions to the understanding of DNA damage response signaling pathways. Dr. Stern’s current work in breast cancer and melanoma includes developing approaches to countering rapid resistance to anti-cancer agents that target cancer signaling pathways. Dr. Stern is active in cancer training at Yale and in the Yale Cancer Center scientific leadership. He is Associate Director of Shared Resources at Yale Cancer Center.