Michael Sill

Biography:

My interest in cancer research started early in my career as an undergraduate chemistry major with a focus on biology and biochemistry at The Florida State University. I was curious about the chemical mechanisms leading to tumor development and finding ways to disrupt this process with organic molecules. After a few years, I was awarded an American Cancer Society Fisher Fellowship in 1991 to look at chemical interactions that were hypothesized to cause DNA breakage. My interest in biostatistics began to develop as I gained more exposure to math and statistics from my chemistry and biology classes. By 1994 I was interested in analyzing laboratory data with random components as well as developing experimental or clinical trial designs used to obtain appropriate data. I worked with Dr. Pi-Erh Lin in the Dept. of Statistics and Dr. Kurt Hofer at the Institute of Molecular Biophysics in the application of statistics to demonstrate the effectiveness of a drug in the presence of radiation. With their help, I joined the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics, which later split into two departments, and I continued with the Statistics Dept. My Ph.D. advisors were Dr. Allan R. Sampson, who focused on clinical trial designs, and Dr. Leon J. Gleser. Together we developed methods for combining phase II trial data with phase III data that could increase statistical power while limiting the chances of falsely declaring ineffective therapies as being effective.

After graduating in 2000, I joined Roswell Park’s Statistical and Data Center for the Gynecology Oncology Group (GOG), which conducted phase I to phase III clinical trials to evaluate new therapies in gynecological cancers. My work started out with developing and analyzing clinical and biological data for phase II trials. These trials have relatively small sample sizes, which appealed to me because some of the inferential problems can be more challenging. This work quickly broadened to phase I trials which are more concerned with treatment toxicities. I have had some experience with phase III trials involving cervical and endometrial cancer, a few of which caused practice changing care.

In addition, I have attended the semi-annual meetings for the GOG (now NRG Oncology) for over 20 years. My area of specialization is in gynecologic cancers. During this time, I participated in discussions with members of the Developmental Therapeutics Committee, the Uterine Corpus Cancer Subcommittee, and the Gynecologic Cancer Committee. These meetings bring together many renowned biologists, gynecologic oncologists, and medical oncologists who collaborate with statisticians, bioinformaticists, and data managers with specializations in gynecological, breast, bowel, brain, and a range of cancers treated with radiation. Together with government support, we design, monitor, analyze, and interpret these trials with the aim of advancing cancer care.