Headshot portrait of Quynh-Thu Le - Katharine Dexter McCormick and Stanley McCormick Memorial Professor and Professor of Radiation Oncology and (by courtesy) of Otolaryngology (Head and Neck Surgery)
Bio-X Affiliated Faculty

Quynh-Thu Le, MD is the Katharine Dexter McCormick & Stanley McCormick Memorial Professor and Chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Stanford University. She co-directs the Radiation Biology Program of the Stanford Cancer Institute. Her clinical focus is on radiation management of head and neck cancer (HNC). She has led multicenter phase II and III clinical trials, testing the addition of novel drugs as well as radiosensitizer or radioprotector with chemoradiotherapy in HNC. Her lab works on approaches to regenerate salivary glands after radiation damage, identification of biomarkers of prognosis and treatment resistance in HNC, and development of novel treatment strategies for HNC with a focus on the tumor microenvironment and Galectin-1.

She currently co-chairs the NRG Oncology Group of the NCI-sponsored National Clinical Trial Network (NCTN), which conducts practice-changing phase II-III trials in many cancers. Before that, she chaired the HNC Committee of NRG Oncology for ten years. She has received grant support from ASCO, ASTRO as well as P01, R01 and R21 grants from the NIH. She has served as a reviewer for several journals and NIH study sections. She has been actively involved in many national and international organizations such as ASTRO, ASCO and AARC and ARS. She was inducted into the Fellowship of the American College of Radiology (FACR), the American Society of Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (FASTRO) and the Institute of Medicine / National Academy of Medicine (IOM/NAM). She was also honored with the Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award.

Dr. Le's laboratory is dedicated to identifying pathways and biomarkers associated with treatment resistance in head and neck cancers, and exploring the mechanisms by which these biomarkers lead to treatment resistance, especially radiation resistance. They aim to develop combination strategies to target these pathways effectively while using biomarkers to select for patients who would benefit from these novel strategies. Currently, their primary focus includes investigating the role of the Nrf2 pathway, Galectin-1, and other key players in treatment resistance, especially radioresistance utilizing cutting-edge techniques such as nanoparticle-delivered CRISPR for precise genome editing and small molecule drug screening. By analyzing clinical samples with innovative methodologies such as spatial genomics and proteomics, the lab translates scientific discoveries into actionable strategies, ultimately offering hope for patients by overcoming treatment resistance.

Another major direction of Dr. Le's laboratory aims to identify key progenitor cells and studying their role in tissue regeneration following radiation damage with a focus on salivary glands. By studying human salivary gland stem/progenitor cells, they identify pertinent molecular pathways involved in radiation-induced injury and glandular regeneration after radiation damage. From this they can develop novel therapy to mitigate the deleterious effect of radiation on these tissues with the goal of improving salivary gland function after head and neck radiation therapy.

Another area of Dr. Le's research is clinical trial development. She is one of the three group chairs of the NRG Oncology Group (a cooperative group of the NCI-sponsored Clinical Trial Network [NCTN]). In her role, Dr. Lee oversees several committees to develop and conduct many large phase II and III trials in different tumor types including brain, head and neck, breast, thoracic, gastrointestinal (GI), genitourinary (GU), gynecologic (GYN) and soft tissue malignancies. Their goal is “to improve the lives of patients with cancer by conducting practice-changing multi-institutional clinical and translational research”.