Research Specialty
The emphasis of Dr. Massion's laboratory is on lung tumorigenesis and on using genomic, proteomic and advanced imaging approaches for the identification and validation of molecular determinants of early detection, progression and prognosis.
Research Description
1. Role of chromosome 3q in lung cancer. Selection of candidate genes driving a genomic amplicon on Chromosome 3q. Focus on functional genomics for candidate driver genes on chromosome 3q.
2. Proteomic approach to preinvasive lung cancer. Protein profiling of preinvasive lesions in bronchial biopsy.
3. Tumor heterogeneity in SCLC.
4. Non-invasive evaluation of indeterminate pulmonary nodules (IPNs).
5. Lung cancer biomarker discovery and validation. Identification of discriminatory proteins between lung cancer and controls.
About Our Founding Investigator, Dr. Pierre Massion
Dr. Massion was born March 28, 1963, in Brussels, Belgium. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, where he also completed a clinical fellowship and a residency.
He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in pulmonary research at the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and later held a residency in internal medicine at UCSF-Mount Zion Medical Center and a pulmonary and critical care medicine fellowship at UCSF.
Since 2001, Dr. Massion worked at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), where he specialized in cancer care and established a research lab that made multiple discoveries related to cancer biomarkers, the evaluation of pulmonary nodules, and screening protocols to improve early detection of lung cancer.
Most recently, he was the Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair and professor of medicine at VUMC, and the director of the Cancer Early Detection and Prevention Initiative and co-leader of the Cancer Health Outcomes and Control Research Program at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC). He was also director of faculty development in the Division of Allergy, Pulmonary, and Critical Care Medicine and served as a member of the Diversity Liaison Committee in the Department of Medicine at VICC.
Dr. Massion was the principal investigator of several ongoing clinical trials; he authored more than 180 studies; and was well regarded as a mentor to junior faculty and students at all levels.
Among many career awards, Dr. Massion received the Patricia A. Stern Award from the LUNGevity Foundation, the ASCO Foundation Advanced Clinical Research Award in Lung Cancer, and the Damon Runyon Lilly Clinical Investigator Award. He was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2015.