Razelle Kurzrock

Razelle Kurzrock, MD is one of the world's foremost authorities on early-phase oncology clinical trials, precision medicine, and basket trial design. She served for many years as founding chair of the Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics (Phase I Program) at MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she built one of the largest and most productive phase I programs globally. She is a pioneer in the use of molecular tumor boards to guide first-in-human and early-phase trials, advocating for biomarker-driven patient selection in dose escalation studies. Dr. Kurzrock is a co-developer of the IMPACT (Initiative for Molecular Profiling and Advanced Cancer Therapy) trial, a landmark basket trial at MD Anderson integrating next-generation sequencing to match patients to targeted agents across tumor types. Her work has fundamentally shaped how phase I trials are designed, conducted, and analyzed in the era of genomic oncology. She has led or co-led over 200 early-phase trials and published extensively on pharmacodynamic biomarkers, adaptive dose escalation, and response assessment in solid tumors. Dr. Kurzrock currently directs translational research efforts at the Medical College of Wisconsin, continuing to bridge genomic discovery with early drug development.