Dr. Anker is currently a clinical and research fellow in the Hematology & Medical Oncology Department at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. His career goal is to become an academic physician scientist with a focus on laboratory and translational tumor immunology and immunotherapy-related research for genitourinary cancers. He has been involved in scientific research since high school when he joined a laboratory analyzing maize genetics at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 2005. Dr. Anker has continued to pursue academic research, completing a Student Honors Thesis during his undergraduate training at Dartmouth College. He graduated with High Honors in Biology, was named a Rufus Choate Scholar (the highest academic honor, awarded to the top 5% of the class), and received a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellowship. Dr. Anker went on to pursue oncological and immunotherapy-related research, joining the laboratory of Dr. Renier Brentjens at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, investigating the immunomodulatory properties of lenalidomide to enhance the efficacy of CD19 chimeric antigen receptor T cells for leukemia in multiple murine models. Dr. Brentjens was a role model for a career as a physician scientist inspiring his decision to pursue MD/PhD training in the MSTP program at Northwestern University. There, he completed a PhD under the co-mentorship of Dr. Sarki Abdulkadir and Dr. Praveen Thumbikat. Dr. Anker identified a unique clinical bacterial isolate from a patient with chronic prostatitis that reprogrammed the prostate tumor microenvironment and sensitized otherwise resistance tumors to antiPD-1 immune checkpoint inhibition (published in Nature Communications). For this work, Dr. Anker generated a surgical protocol to create clinically relevant orthotopic syngeneic mouse models of prostate cancer. He received an F30 NRSA NIH NCI award for this project, and was recognized with the Driskill Alumni Research Award for Outstanding Student Achievement. During that time, he also investigated the role of DNA repair gene alterations as biomarkers of the tumor microenvironment2 as well as novel genitourinary cancer therapeutics including a MYC inhibitor and a DOT1L inhibitor. For his performance during medical school, he was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. Dr. Anker went on to complete Internal Medicine Residency through the Research Residency Program at Mount Sinai Hospital, and he continued at Mount Sinai where he is currently a fellow in the Hematology & Medical Oncology Fellowship Program. Dr. Anker is currently conducting research under the co-mentorship of Dr. Matthew Galsky and Dr. Nina Bhardwaj. They have multiple ongoing projects regarding tumor immunology in genitourinary cancers. Regarding this work, Dr. Anker was a recipient of a 2024 Conquer Cancer Young Investigator Award and a 2024 Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network Young Investigator Award, and they published a manuscript in JITC identifying unique baseline and post-treatment immunophenotypes and neoantigen-specific T cell responses in exceptional metastatic urothelial cancer responders from a clinical trial involving cisplatin-based chemotherapy and immune checkpoint inhibition. Each of these opportunities provided an invaluable experience working under accomplished mentors and carrying out hypothesis-driven projects to completion with presentations, manuscripts, and grants, as he has refined his career goal of becoming an academic physician scientist.
Dr. Anker’s study titled Multiplex protein imaging analysis of SPP1+ macrophages and TREM1+ and CLEC5A+ myeloid cells in urothelial cancer patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibition aims to:
- Define the spatial profile of MΦ subsets, including SPP1+ MΦs, in the UC TME.
- Investigate the inter-cellular interactions of TREM1+ cells, CLEC5A+ cells, and SPP1+ MΦs in the UC TME and their impact on ICI response.
ConduITS is supported by NCATS of the NIH’s CTSA Program. Any use of CTSA-supported resources requires citation of grant number UL1TR004419 awarded to ISMMS in the acknowledgment section of every publication resulting from this support. Adherence to the NIH Public Access Policy is also required.
