Nancy DeMore, MD

Description

Dr. Nancy DeMore is a board-certified breast surgical oncologist and is the BMW endowed chair in cancer research at MUSC Health. Her clinical interests are breast cancer in young women, breast conservation therapy, breast sarcoma, inflammatory breast cancer, oncoplastic surgery, sentinel node biopsy, and skin and nipple-sparing mastectomy. As a surgeon, Dr. DeMore has played an integral role in the evaluation of minimally invasive techniques that have changed the standard of care for patients who require sentinel lymph node biopsy. Furthermore, she has expanded the indications for breast conservation by advancing the use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy (cancer-killing drugs taken before primary therapy). Dr. DeMore is also a physician-scientist with extensive research experience in developing new therapies for breast cancer. She has been a co-investigator on 11 active clinical trials and 24 completed clinical trials, which have led to clinical advances in the care of breast cancer patients, in particular, those with metastatic breast cancer. For more than 25 years, she has investigated tumor angiogenesis (the growth of new capillary blood vessels, which provide tumors with oxygen and nutrients.) Her lab focuses on discovering novel factors that stimulate this growth and developing new drugs that block these factors and therefore inhibit tumor growth. Dr. DeMore has been appointed to a six-year term on the NIH Oncology 2, Translational Clinical IRG, Cancer Immunopathology and Immunotherapy Study Section. Her hope is that over the next 20 years, she will have helped contribute to excellent patient care, advancement of less-invasive survival techniques, and development of novel therapies that will improve survival for patients with metastatic disease. Dr. DeMore obtained her medical degree from Chicago Medical School. She completed her residency at Boston University Medical Center, a cancer research fellowship at Harvard Medical School, and fellowship training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. DeMore practiced as a professor of surgery at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill for 13 years.