Nancy Klauber-DeMore, M.D. Research Laboratory

Nancy Klauber-DeMore, M.D. is the BMW Endowed Chair in Cancer Research at the Medical University of South Carolina, Klauber-DeMore has extensive research experience in developing new therapies for breast cancer that have led to clinical advances in patient care, particularly for those with metastatic disease. She has been a principal or co-investigator on more than 30 active and completed clinical trials and has contributed to five patents or patents pending. She is also developing novel surgical devices to aid in breast surgery.

Her lab focuses on discovering novel factors that stimulate the growth of new capillary blood vessels that provide tumors with oxygen and nutrients with a goal of developing new drugs to block these factors, therefore inhibiting tumor growth. She has also played an integral role as a surgeon in the evaluation of surgical clinical trials as well as clinical trials evaluating the role of natural products in cancer treatment.

With a focus on discovering less toxic therapies, Klauber-DeMore is leading investigator-initiated trials that look at the effects of natural products, such as an extract of frankincense, on tumor biology in humans and is collaborating with Mark Hamman, Ph.D., a researcher in Hollings’ Developmental Cancer Therapeutics Program, to generate potent analogues of frankincense.

More recently, research by Klauber-DeMore helped to lead to the development of IVT-8086, a new innovative cancer therapy for the treatment of osteosarcoma. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted the drug both the rare pediatric disease designation and orphan drug designation, highlighting the significant unmet medical needs of patients with this life-threatening disease.