Dr. Ciara Kelly presented “Clinical Trials 101” to GIST patients and caretakers on May 19th, 2023 at 12pm ET. During this virtual presentation, Dr. Kelly discussed types of clinical trials, how to find a clinical trial, current open clinical trials, and more.

If you have any questions on this presentation, please email The Life Raft Group at liferaft@liferaftgroup.org

About Our Presenter

Dr. Ciara KellyDr. Ciara Kelly,
Medical Oncologist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Dr. Kelly is a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center who has expertise in treating and researching bone and soft tissue sarcomas and merkel cell carcinoma. She works very closely with a team of medical oncologists, surgeons, radiation oncologists, nurses, and patient support advocates.

Dr. Kelly’s research aims to develop new and more personalized therapies to treat sarcomas. She is actively involved in developing and designing clinical trials that will look at novel agents that target molecular changes within tumors. She is also studying innovative combination immunotherapy options that will harness a person’s own immune defenses to fight their cancer.

Dr. Kelly has a particular interest in advancing understanding of gastrointestinal stromal tumors and other sarcomas at the molecular level. She is using liquid biopsies to analyze tumor DNA in the blood and tumor biopsies to uncover a biomarker that will ultimately help match the best treatment option with each individual person’s tumor. Dr. Kelly is committed to designing and developing novel therapeutic clinical trials for GIST patients that incorporate correlative studies which provide an opportunity to further our understanding of this disease.