Ignacio Garrido-Laguna, MD, PhD

Ignacio Garrido-Laguna, MD, PhD

Professor, University of Utah School of Medicine

Director, Phase 1 Program

Co-leader GI Oncology Multidisciplinary Disease Group

Expert Panel Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer: ASCO Guideline Update 2020

Ignacio Garrido-Laguna, MD, PhD is a Professor of Oncology with tenure at the University of Utah School of Medicine and a member of the Experimental Therapeutics Program at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI). At HCI, he sees patients with gastrointestinal cancers and patients enrolled in Phase I trials.

Dr. Garrido-Laguna’s primary research interest is pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Since Dr. Garrido-Laguna arrival at HCI in 2011, accrual of PDAC patients to clinical trials has increased from less than 5% in 2011 to consistently 15%. He is PI of multiple clinical trials including novel therapies such as immunotherapies that hold promise in the treatment of this disease. His research team work in drug development in pancreatic cancer is focused on five different areas. They coined the PRIME acronym to refer to these areas (Nevala-Plagemann Nat Rev Clin Oncol 2020). P for Pathway inhibitors, R for DNA Repair agents, I for Immunotherapy, M for drugs targeting cancer metabolism and E for drugs targeting the extracellular matrix. At HCI, patients with pancreatic cancer can participate in clinical trials targeting each of these pancreatic cancer vulnerabilities. In 2018, his team and collaborators reported exceptional responses to entrectinib among patients with advanced pancreatic cancer whose tumors harbored NTRK/ROS1 fusions (Pishvaian et al JCO Precision Oncology 2018). This work was part of an early phase trial that led to FDA approval of entrectinib in patients with solid tumors with NTRK fusions (Doebele et. al Lancet Oncology 2020). In addition, this data contributed to the inclusion of NTRK testing in the recently published ASCO guidelines for metastatic pancreatic cancer (Sohal et al. JCO 2020). While NTRK fusions are very rare events in PDAC (<0.5%), genetic testing to them may render new treatment opportunities for a subset of patients with this recalcitrant disease. In addition, translational work at Huntsman Cancer institute from Aria Vaishnavi (Martin McMahon lab) recently demonstrated that TPR-NTRK fusions were oncogenic in PDAC. More importantly, vertical inhibition of NTRK pathway with entrectinib plus cobimetinib led to sustained inhibition of the pathway and durable responses in xenografts (Vaishnavi et. al Cell Reports 2020).

Dr. Garrido-Laguna is member of the GI Committee at SWOG. In collaboration with Dr. Sohal from University of Cincinnatti and Dr.Beatty from University of Pennsylvania, he is conducting a translational medicine study using samples from SWOG1505 to evaluate immunologic predictors of therapeutic response to neoadjuvant therapy for pancreatic cancer.

He is a Principal Investigator in more than 15 phase 1 clinical trials. This includes an ongoing investigator initiated study to evaluate a RAS signature in patients with KRAS positive metastatic colorectal cancer treated with Folfiri plus a MEK inihibitor.

Dr. Garrido-Laguna received his medical degree from the School of Medicine of Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain. He then completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine-Medical Oncology at Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre in Madrid, Spain.

Before joining HCI, Dr. Garrido-Laguna was a clinical fellow in the Phase I program at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship in the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins. While at Hopkins, he worked extensively in patient derived xenografts. His research showed that stroma (tissue around the tumor that gives nutrition to cancer cells) is involved in resistance to chemotherapy in pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic trials decision tree: https://healthcare.utah.edu/huntsmancancerinstitute/clinical-trials/images/pancreatic-cancer-slide.jpg

Colorectal trials decision tree: https://healthcare.utah.edu/huntsmancancerinstitute/clinical-trials/images/colorectal-cancer-slide.jpg

GI trials at Hunstman Cancer Institute: http://healthcare.utah.edu/huntsmancancerinstitute/clinical-trials/find-clinical-trials-at-hci/gastrointestinal.php

Avatar mice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_avatars