Kurt R. Weiss
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Speaker Affiliation
Kurt R. Weiss, M.D., The University of Pittsburgh, Associate Professor, Director, Musculoskeletal Oncology Laboratory, Vice Chair of Translational Research
Presentation: Press On - 35 Years of Care, Mentorship, And Love
Biography
Dr. Kurt R. Weiss is an associate professor in the University of Pittsburgh Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Division of Musculoskeletal Oncology. He has joint appointments in Surgical Oncology and Pathology. He serves as an Advisory Dean for the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and as Vice Chair of Translational Research for his Department. His research career began as an undergraduate student at Notre Dame when he worked in the Ferguson Laboratory with Dr. Christopher Evans. During medical school at Jefferson Medical College, he performed a summer research internship with Dr. Eugenie Kleinerman at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Between his second and third years of medical school he participated in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute/National Institutes of Health Research Scholars Program where he worked in Dr. Lee Helman’s Laboratory in the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Pediatric Oncology Branch. During residency he performed original osteosarcoma research during his lab year with Dr. Johnny Huard. After his fellowship in Musculoskeletal Oncology at the University of Toronto with Drs. Jay Wunder and Peter Ferguson, Dr. Weiss was recruited back to Pittsburgh by his Chairman, Dr. Freddie Fu, as faculty and started his own Lab.
The Musculoskeletal Oncology Laboratory (MOL) is focused on sarcoma metastatic potential. Dr. Weiss’s team of PhD collaborators, residents, medical students, undergraduate students, and technicians perform basic and translational sarcoma research experiments. Much of this work is accomplished with samples from the Musculoskeletal Oncology Tumor Registry and Tissue Bank (MOTOR) that Dr. Weiss and his clinical partners established in 2012. The MOTOR now holds over 16,000 unique samples from over 600 sarcoma patients with clinical annotation, making it one of the largest sarcoma tissue repositories in the country. This resource provides vital biological reagents for both intramural and extramural sarcoma investigators who collaborate with the MOL.
Dr. Weiss is an author on over 80 peer-reviewed publications. He recently finished his term as Research Committee Chair for the Musculoskeletal Tumor Society, the largest professional society for musculoskeletal oncology surgeons on the continent of North America. He is on the Mentorship Committee for the Connective Tissue Oncology Society, for which he has also served on the Board of Directors. He was recently named to the Scientific Steering Committee of the Sarcoma Alliance for Research through Collaboration (SARC), the largest private supporter of sarcoma clinical trials in the world. He has taught at the Orthopedic Research Society grant writing course for many years. Dr. Weiss is a regular reviewer for NCI grant applications and was on the inaugural Programmatic Panel for the Department of Defense Rare Cancers Research Program. His funding sources have included K08 and R21 awards from the NCI as well as the support of numerous foundations including the Orthopedic Research and Education Foundation and the Connective Tissue Oncology Society. Dr. Weiss is a founding member of the Pittsburgh Cure Sarcoma (PCS) patient advocacy group, as well as the Pittsburgh Sarcoma Research Collaborative (PSaRC).
