David Solit, MD is the Elizabeth and Felix Rohatyn Chair at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He is a practicing Medical Oncologist and laboratory investigator with a joint appointment in the Department of Medicine and the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program. The goal of his research is the development of cancer therapies that target pathways responsible for tumor initiation and progression. He is particularly interested in the study of cancers in which the growth of the tumor depends upon alterations in kinase and steroid receptor signaling. The underlying hypothesis is that the consequences of inhibiting an oncogenic pathway will vary as a function of cell lineage and the complement of mutations within the tumor. Therefore, in order to design rational therapeutic studies, one must understand not only which genetic changes are commonly found within particular tumor types but the mechanisms whereby these genetic alterations support tumor growth, survival, metastasis or other hallmarks of the cancer phenotype. Dr. Solit’s recent laboratory work has focused on the identification of mutational events that co-occur with and cooperate with mutant BRAF in melanomagenesis and abrograte BRAF-addiction and thus response to selective RAF inhibitors. His research group has also been active in the development of novel methods to genetically profile formalin fixed, paraffin embedded tissues for somatic mutations and copy number alterations.