Research Profile: David Einstein, MD

About David Einstein, MD

David Einstein, MDDr. Einstein is an academic medical oncologist specializing in genitourinary cancers. His clinical activities include providing direct patient care and consultation during three half-day clinics a week and four weeks a year on the inpatient oncology ward and hematology/oncology consult services. In addition, Dr. Einstein spends 60% of his time on clinical trial development, serving as overall Principal Investigator (PI) and site PI of several DFHCC clinical trials that investigate immune-based and targeted therapies for GU cancers. He also conducts translational research as PI of a grant on biomarkers for low-risk prostate cancer. He has also developed tools to improve quality of life, physician communication, and end-of-life decision-making, especially as it relates to patients with genitourinary cancers.

Dr. Einstein's research interests include immunotherapy for genitourinary malignancies, targeted agents for prostate cancer, and translational studies of biomarkers and drug resistance in prostate cancer. He is overall PI of an investigator-initiated trial of PD-1 inhibition in prostate cancer, currently accruing at BIDMC and DFCI (NCT03637543). Together with research mentor Dr. Steven Balk, he has designed correlative studies for this study, which were incorporated into a funded PCF Challenge Award proposal. They also successfully obtained funding through a P20 grant for a pilot study of immunogenic prostate cancer in African Americans. Dr. Einstein developed correlative studies and contributed to protocol writing for an in-progress multi-center trial involving combination checkpoint inhibition in kidney cancer (NCT03117309). Aside from immunotherapy, he is also investigating targeted therapies in prostate cancer. He is overall PI of a trial of a polo-like kinase 1 inhibitor combined with abiraterone, currently accruing patients at BIDMC, DFCI, and MGH (NCT03414034), and is a co-investigator on a Bridge Grant from the Koch Institute to perform further pre-clinical work on this combination therapy. He is overall PI of an investigator-initiated study of HER2 inhibition in biomarker-selected castration-resistant prostate cancer (NCT04781374) and is working with colleagues in the Balk lab to design correlative studies funded by a grant from the Department of Defense. Dr. Einstein serves as site PI of several other currently accruing and forthcoming clinical trials for genitourinary cancers.

He is PI of a project investigating biomarkers of indolent versus aggressive disease in the setting of low-risk prostate cancer and active surveillance, supported by a physician research award from the Department of Defense. Work from this effort has been published in the Journal of Precision Oncology. Dr. Einstein is PI of the DF/HCC Rapid Autopsy Program, through which they have banked tissue from patients deceased of genitourinary cancers for multiple research efforts investigating mechanisms of drug resistance and tumor biology. Multiple DF/HCC labs are generating patient-derived xenografts and organoids from these tissues, and they are working with the Center for Cancer Precision Medicine to perform advanced techniques such as single-nucleus RNA sequencing. Given its importance to many labs, this project is included in the DF/HCC Prostate SPORE submission as a component of the Pathology core.