Dr. Leora Horn

About Leora Horn

Accolades

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  Pleural and Lung Cancer

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  Team Leader

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  Excellence in Research

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  Board Certified in Medical Oncology

As an oncologist, Horn focuses her clinical practice on patients with lung cancer, pleural mesothelioma and thymic cancer. She is the principal investigator on several ongoing clinical trials that target those cancers.

Horn also is an associate professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University and the assistant director of the Educator Development Program, designed to enhance the knowledge, skills and attitudes of Medical Center faculty.

Much of her research focuses on experimental therapeutics, and she has received a Vanderbilt-Ingram Impact Award for her work. The National Cancer Institute further awarded her with a Cancer Clinical Investigator Team Leadership Award in 2015.

Horn received her medical degree from the University of Toronto, where she also did a fellowship in Internal Medicine that was funded by the Canadian Association of Medical Oncology. She did a second fellowship at Vanderbilt-Ingram, where now she has taken a leadership role.

Running Clinical Trials for New Drug Combinations

Horn’s latest Phase I/II clinical trial for lung cancer started in August 2018. It involves a combination of Opdivo (nivolumab), the popular immunotherapy drug, and Vorolanib, a vascular growth-factor inhibitor.

If successful, the same combination may be tried for mesothelioma.

Horn took the lead in an earlier clinical trial involving a similar combination of Gilotrif (afatanib) and Portrazza (necitumumab) that targets specific tumor mutations.

The study was funded by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, which is an alliance of leading cancer centers around the world dedicated to research and patient care.

“We are now testing a novel drug combination to determine if we can produce a more durable response to prolong and enhance our patients’ lives,” she said in a press release announcing the trial.

Horn has published more than 30 book chapters and papers, most on her research into lung cancer.

She is a member of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. She is board certified in Internal Medicine.

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