Hope Rugo

Hope Rugo is a Professor and Director of Breast Oncology and Clinical Trials Education at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is recognized internationally as a leading expert in breast cancer clinical trials, with a particular focus on antibody-drug conjugates, trastuzumab and its biosimilars, and innovative clinical trial designs. Her work has been central to the clinical development of sacituzumab govitecan (Trodelvy), a Trop-2-directed ADC that transformed the treatment of metastatic TNBC and HR+ breast cancer. Rugo was a principal investigator on the ASCENT trial, which demonstrated significant survival benefit for sacituzumab govitecan versus single-agent chemotherapy in heavily pretreated metastatic TNBC, leading to full FDA approval. She has also led extensive work on trastuzumab biosimilar development, chairing or participating in multiple regulatory-enabling equivalence studies, and has become a leading expert on biosimilar adoption in oncology practice. In addition to her research, Rugo has made major contributions to supportive oncology, including studies on the management of chemotherapy-induced alopecia, nail toxicity, and dermatologic adverse events from targeted therapies. She is co-founder of the TBCRC (Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium) and has helped build one of the nation's most productive breast cancer clinical trials programs.