Memorial Hospital Research Laboratories
The Michael Berger Lab
Research
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Professor
The focus of the Berger laboratory is to use novel computational and experimental techniques to characterize the spectrum of genetic mutations in human tumors in order to identify biomarkers of cancer progression and drug response.
The identification of molecular drivers of cancer and the development of targeted therapies for these drivers offer hope for better outcomes for patients with cancer. Global efforts to comprehensively characterize the genomes of all major cancer types continue to reveal new genetic alterations with implications for tumor biology, prognosis, and treatment. Using massively parallel next-generation DNA sequencing, we are developing and applying methods of profiling individual tumor specimenspatient biospecimens for somatic base mutations and other genomicand inherited alterations that may influence response to therapy. Our research falls into two main categories: technology development and biomarker discovery.
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Featured News
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Publications Highlights
Genetic Ancestry Correlates with Somatic Differences in a Real-World Clinical Cancer Sequencing Cohort. Arora K, Tran TN, Kemel Y, Mehine M, Liu YL, Nandakumar S, Smith SA, Brannon AR, Ostrovnaya I, Stopsack KH, Razavi P, Safonov A, Rizvi HA, Hellmann MD, Vijai J, Reynolds TC, Fagin JA, Carrot-Zhang J, Offit K, Solit DB, Ladanyi M, Schultz N, Zehir A, Brown CL, Stadler ZK, Chakravarty D, Bandlamudi C, Berger MF. Cancer Discov. 2022 Nov 2;12(11):2552-2565. doi: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-22-0312. PMID: 36048199; PMCID: PMC9633436.
The context-specific role of germline pathogenicity in tumorigenesis. Srinivasan P, Bandlamudi C, Jonsson P, Kemel Y, Chavan SS, Richards AL, Penson AV, Bielski CM, Fong C, Syed A, Jayakumaran G, Prasad M, Hwee J, Sumer SO, de Bruijn I, Li X, Gao J, Schultz N, Cambria R, Galle J, Mukherjee S, Vijai J, Cadoo KA, Carlo MI, Walsh MF, Mandelker D, Ceyhan-Birsoy O, Shia J, Zehir A, Ladanyi M, Hyman DM, Zhang L, Offit K, Robson ME, Solit DB, Stadler ZK, Berger MF, Taylor BS. Nat Genet. 2021 Nov;53(11):1577-1585. doi: 10.1038/s41588-021-00949-1. Epub 2021 Nov 5. PMID: 34741162; PMCID: PMC8957388.
Development of Genome-Derived Tumor Type Prediction to Inform Clinical Cancer Care. Penson A, Camacho N, Zheng Y, Varghese AM, Al-Ahmadie H, Razavi P, Chandarlapaty S, Vallejo CE, Vakiani E, Gilewski T, Rosenberg JE, Shady M, Tsui DWY, Reales DN, Abeshouse A, Syed A, Zehir A, Schultz N, Ladanyi M, Solit DB, Klimstra DS, Hyman DM, Taylor BS, Berger MF. JAMA Oncol. 2020 Jan 1;6(1):84-91. doi: 10.1001/jamaoncol.2019.3985. PMID: 31725847; PMCID: PMC6865333.
Tracking tumour evolution in glioma through liquid biopsies of cerebrospinal fluid. Miller AM, Shah RH, Pentsova EI, Pourmaleki M, Briggs S, Distefano N, Zheng Y, Skakodub A, Mehta SA, Campos C, Hsieh WY, Selcuklu SD, Ling L, Meng F, Jing X, Samoila A, Bale TA, Tsui DWY, Grommes C, Viale A, Souweidane MM, Tabar V, Brennan CW, Reiner AS, Rosenblum M, Panageas KS, DeAngelis LM, Young RJ, Berger MF, Mellinghoff IK. Nature. 2019 Jan;565(7741):654-658. doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-0882-3. Epub 2019 Jan 23. PMID: 30675060; PMCID: PMC6457907.
Mutational landscape of metastatic cancer revealed from prospective clinical sequencing of 10,000 patients. Zehir A, Benayed R, Shah RH, Syed A, Middha S, Kim HR, Srinivasan P, Gao J, Chakravarty D, Devlin SM, Hellmann MD, Barron DA, Schram AM, Hameed M, Dogan S, Ross DS, Hechtman JF, DeLair DF, Yao J, Mandelker DL, Cheng DT, Chandramohan R, Mohanty AS, Ptashkin RN, Jayakumaran G, Prasad M, Syed MH, Rema AB, Liu ZY, Nafa K, Borsu L, Sadowska J, Casanova J, Bacares R, Kiecka IJ, Razumova A, Son JB, Stewart L, Baldi T, Mullaney KA, Al-Ahmadie H, Vakiani E, Abeshouse AA, Penson AV, Jonsson P, Camacho N, Chang MT, Won HH, Gross BE, Kundra R, Heins ZJ, Chen HW, Phillips S, Zhang H, Wang J, Ochoa A, Wills J, Eubank M, Thomas SB, Gardos SM, Reales DN, Galle J, Durany R, Cambria R, Abida W, Cercek A, Feldman DR, Gounder MM, Hakimi AA, Harding JJ, Iyer G, Janjigian YY, Jordan EJ, Kelly CM, Lowery MA, Morris LGT, Omuro AM, Raj N, Razavi P, Shoushtari AN, Shukla N, Soumerai TE, Varghese AM, Yaeger R, Coleman J, Bochner B, Riely GJ, Saltz LB, Scher HI, Sabbatini PJ, Robson ME, Klimstra DS, Taylor BS, Baselga J, Schultz N, Hyman DM, Arcila ME, Solit DB, Ladanyi M, Berger MF. Nat Med. 2017 Jun;23(6):703-713. doi: 10.1038/nm.4333. Epub 2017 May 8. Erratum in: Nat Med. 2017 Aug 4;23 (8):1004. PMID: 28481359; PMCID: PMC5461196.
People
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Michael F. Berger, PhD
Co-Director, Marie-Josée & Henry R. Kravis Center for Molecular Oncology; Chief Attending, Clinical Computational Diagnostics Service, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Professor
- Researcher Michael Berger focuses on massively parallel sequencing of tumor DNA for biomarker discovery and clinical diagnostics.
- PhD, Harvard University
- [email protected]
- Email Address
- 646-888-3386
- Office Phone
- View physician profile
- Physician profile
Members
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Assistant Lab Member
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Principal Computational Biologist
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Senior Computational Biologist I
Bioinformatics Software Engineer, CMO Cell-Free DNA Informatics
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Computational Biologist, CMO Cell-Free DNA Informatics
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Senior Computational Biologist, CMO Technology Innovation
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Head of CMO Technology Innovation
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WGS Graduate Student
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Research Fellow
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Research Lab Manager, CMO Technology Innovation
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Computational Biologist
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Senior Computational Biologist I
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Instructor
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Assistant Attending
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Lead Scientist, CMO Cell-Free DNA Informatics
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Senior Computational Biologist, CMO Cell-Free DNA Informatics
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Principal Computational Biologist
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Senior Research Assistant, CMO Technology Innovation
Bioinformatics Software Engineer, CMO Cell-Free DNA Informatics
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Lab Alumni
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Research Fellow
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Medical Student
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Research Technician
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Senior Research Assistant, CMO Technology Innovation
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Senior Project Manager
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Research Fellow
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WGS Graduate Student
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Research Scholar
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Bioinformatics Software Engineer, cfDNA Informatics
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WGS Graduate Student
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Computational Biologist, CMO Technology Innovation
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Lab Manager, CMO Technology Innovation
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Bioinformatics Engineer, CMO Technology Innovation
Senior Computational Biologist, cfDNA Informatics
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Computational Biologist, CMO Technology Innovation
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Research Fellow
Bioinformatics Tech
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Computational Biologist, CMO Technology Innovation
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Bioinformatics Tech
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Graduate Student
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Group Leader, Innovation Laboratory
Research Assistant, CMO Technology Innovation
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Computational Biologist
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Clinical Research Fellow
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Bioinformatics Technician
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Disclosures
Doctors and faculty members often work with pharmaceutical, device, biotechnology, and life sciences companies, and other organizations outside of MSK, to find safe and effective cancer treatments, to improve patient care, and to educate the health care community.
MSK requires doctors and faculty members to report (“disclose”) the relationships and financial interests they have with external entities. As a commitment to transparency with our community, we make that information available to the public.
Michael F. Berger discloses the following relationships and financial interests:
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AstraZeneca
Professional Services and Activities -
JCO Precision Oncology
Professional Services and Activities (Uncompensated) -
Journal of Molecular Diagnostics
Professional Services and Activities (Uncompensated)
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Paige.AI, Inc.
Professional Services and Activities -
SOPHiA GENETICS S.A.
Intellectual Property Rights; Professional Services and Activities (Uncompensated)
The information published here is a complement to other publicly reported data and is for a specific annual disclosure period. There may be differences between information on this and other public sites as a result of different reporting periods and/or the various ways relationships and financial interests are categorized by organizations that publish such data.
This page and data include information for a specific MSK annual disclosure period (January 1, 2023 through disclosure submission in spring 2024). This data reflects interests that may or may not still exist. This data is updated annually.
Learn more about MSK’s COI policies here. For questions regarding MSK’s COI-related policies and procedures, email MSK’s Compliance Office at [email protected].