Dr. Daniel Schmidt

I started my training as a clinician scientist in the Medical Scientist Training Program at UT Southwestern. As a graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. David Mangelsdorf I studied the connection between lipid-activated nuclear receptors and colorectal cancer in mouse models. I then moved to Boston to join the Harvard Radiation Oncology Residency Program, where I developed an interest in improving the management of patients with prostate cancer. Under the mentorship of Dr. Anthony D’Amico, I designed and conducted a prospective clinical trial showing that MRI-based radiotherapy planning has the potential to reduce toxicity for patients undergoing prostate radiotherapy. Concurrent with residency training I started a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Matthew Vander Heiden where I investigated the role of pyruvate kinase in prostate cancer progression in mouse models. In 2017 I joined the radiation oncology faculty at Beth Israel, and have continued to collaborate with Dr. Vander Heiden to understand the mechanism by which drugs that activate pyruvate kinase improve response to radiation therapy and exploit the dependency on exogenous serine that is induced by this class of agents in prostate cancer. Concurrent with these studies I am working on characterizing the metabolic effects of anti-androgen therapy, particularly with regard to effects on nucleotide metabolism and replication stress. The long-term goals of my research are to understand the acute metabolic alterations induced by radiation and anti-androgen therapy in the context of aggressive prostate cancer to identify strategies that can increase the effectiveness of these treatments while minimizing toxicity.