Nancy U. Lin

Nancy U. Lin, MD is Associate Chief of the Division of Breast Oncology, Director of the Metastatic Breast Cancer Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is the world's foremost expert on breast cancer brain metastases, having dedicated her career to improving outcomes for patients with HER2-positive and triple-negative breast cancer CNS disease—historically among the most challenging and under-studied complications of metastatic breast cancer. Her clinical and translational research has fundamentally changed the approach to brain metastasis in HER2+ breast cancer. Dr. Lin was a lead investigator of the HER2CLIMB trial, which established tucatinib—a highly CNS-active, HER2-selective tyrosine kinase inhibitor—as a breakthrough treatment for HER2+ metastatic breast cancer with brain metastases. Published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2020, the HER2CLIMB trial demonstrated that adding tucatinib to trastuzumab and capecitabine dramatically improved outcomes specifically in patients with active or treated brain metastases, marking the first time a targeted agent had demonstrated CNS-specific survival benefit in this population and leading to FDA approval. She also developed the RANO-BM and RANO-LM criteria for standardized response assessment in breast cancer brain metastases and leptomeningeal disease. Dr. Lin has championed inclusion of patients with active, untreated brain metastases in clinical trials—a historically excluded population—and has led initiatives to standardize CNS response endpoints through the RANO working group. Her program at Dana-Farber incorporates novel neuroimaging, CNS pharmacokinetic studies, and biomarker research to understand mechanisms of CNS progression and resistance in HER2+ disease. She has mentored numerous fellows and junior faculty and serves on the editorial boards of leading oncology journals.