Director, Urological Oncology Research

Dr. Neil H. Bander completed fellowship training in urological oncology under Dr. Willet F. Whitmore, Jr. and an NIH Immunology Training Fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Lloyd Old, both at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. After coming to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medicine (NYPH/WCM), he focused on clinical urological oncology and the development of monoclonal antibodies for targeted cancer therapy.

Beginning in the late 1990s, Dr. Bander directed his efforts to the field of prostate cancer. His research group developed the first monoclonal antibodies to prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) that could effectively bind prostate cancer cells. As a result of Dr. Bander's efforts, PSMA has become recognized as the most prostate-cancer specific cell surface antigen known.

Dr. Bander's research team was the first to show that after an antibody binds to PSMA, the antibody-PSMA complex is rapidly internalized into the targeted cancer cell. This finding supports the potential to use PSMA-binding agents to target either radiopharmaceuticals or highly potent drugs that will be selectively internalized by the cancer cells to specifically kill the tumor cells without causing damage to normal cells.

Dr. Bander's team pioneered the application of PSMA-targeted agents to patients in clinical trials dating back to the early 2000's. These studies demonstrated that the lead antibody, designated J591, is capable of virtually flawless targeting of tumor sites wherever they are in the body. In addition to successful targeting, a significant proportion of the patients demonstrated anti-tumor activity such as PSA declines and tumor shrinkage of as much as > 90%. These trials validated the utility of targeting PSMA and spawned the high level of interest and activity in PSMA-targeted imaging and therapy now taking place around the world.

Seeing the early clinical data with the agents developed in his lab, Dr. Bander predicted that such agents had the potential to transform how prostate cancer patients are diagnosed, monitored and treated. His vision has, in recent years, begun to bear fruit, and PSMA PET imaging and therapeutics have become some of the most promising recent advances in the prostate cancer field [see: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=PSMA].

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