As part of our “Meet Yale Internal Medicine” series, today’s feature is on Sarah Goldberg, MD, MPH, assistant professor of medicine (medical oncology).
Sarah Goldberg, MD, MPH, realized in medical school that she wanted to specialize in medical oncology. She was drawn to the patients and research and inspired by those people she met along the way.
“During medical school and my residency, I realized that I really liked to take care of patients with cancer,” said Goldberg. “It is really rewarding when you help someone get better from the disease, help them improve their symptoms or help them live the way they want to live.”
Goldberg looked for a program that allowed for both patient care and research and liked the balance that she saw at Yale School of Medicine.
She is a clinical and translational researcher with a focus on lung cancer research. Goldberg designs clinical trials for mainly non-small cell lung cancer, including a few trials specifically for patients with EGFR-mutant lung cancer.
Goldberg also researches cancer patients with brain metastases. She developed a trial in conjunction with Harriet Kluger, MD, in the melanoma group and Veronica Chang, MD, FAANS, in neurosurgery, and others to look at immune therapy in the brain.
“In our trial, we looked at patients with melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer and found that immune therapy was effective in the brain for these patients,” explained Goldberg. “Now we are looking at combinations of drugs to test their effectiveness in the brain.”
Goldberg loves both the clinical and research aspects of her work. “It is really incredible to see how much better people can get with the new treatments; we have so much to offer,” she said. “On the research side, there is so much going on in oncology research right now. It is incredible to see what is happening but there is so much more that has to be done.”
“I have met so many people doing remarkable work and it really drew me in. Medical oncology is an amazing field.”