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Andrea Apolo

Andrea B. Apolo, M.D. is a nationally and internationally recognized expert in bladder cancer research. She graduated summa cum laude from Lehman College, City University of New York, with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry and biochemistry. She earned her medical degree at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. She completed a residency in internal medicine at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and completed a medical oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, also in New York City. In 2010 she was recruited to the National Cancer Institute’s Physician-Scientist Early Investigator Program to build a translational bladder cancer program. In 2014 Dr. Apolo received the Lasker Clinical Research Scholars Award and in 2021 was granted tenure at the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Apolo serves within the Center for Cancer Research of the National Cancer Institute as Head of the Bladder Cancer Section of the Genitourinary Malignancies Branch and Director of the Bladder Cancer and Genitourinary Tumors Multidisciplinary Clinic. Dr. Apolo is dedicated to improving the treatment and survival of patients with bladder cancer and other genitourinary tumors. Her research involves developing and designing clinical trials to test novel therapies for bladder, kidney, and rare genitourinary cancers. She has been instrumental in the clinical development of multiple immunotherapeutic agents and combinations, from first-in-human studies through phase 3 clinical trials. She led the bladder cancer study of avelumab that resulted in FDA approval in advanced bladder cancer and the phase 1 study of the combination of cabozantinib and nivolumab that led to a phase 3 and the FDA approval of this combination in kidney cancer.

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