Guarionex Joel DeCastro, MD

Dr. Raza is a Professor of Medicine and Director of the MDS Center at Columbia University in New York, NY. She started her research in Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS) in 1982 and moved to Rush University, Chicago, Illinois in 1992, where she was the Charles Arthur Weaver Professor in Oncology and Director, Division of Myeloid Diseases. The MDS Program, along with a Tissue Repository containing more than 50,000 samples from MDS and acute leukemia patients was successfully relocated to the University of Massachusetts in 2004 and to Columbia University in 2010. Before moving to New York, Dr. Raza was the Chief of Hematology Oncology and the Gladys Smith Martin Professor of Oncology at the University of Massachusetts in Worcester. She has published the results of her laboratory research and clinical trials in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Blood, Cancer, Cancer Research, the British Journal of Hematology, Leukemia, and Leukemia Research. Dr. Raza serves on numerous national and international panels as a reviewer, consultant, and advisor and is the recipient of a number of awards.

Dr. Caryn St. Clair is a Gynecologic Oncologist, specializing in the treatment of gynecologic cancers, including cancers of the ovary, uterus, cervix, vulva and vagina. After graduating from Yale University’s School of Medicine in 2007, Dr. St. Clair completed her residency at Columbia University Medical Center where she was honored with multiple awards, including the Arnold P. Gold Foundation Award for Humanism and Excellence in Teaching. She then went on to complete her fellowship training in gynecologic oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center – one of the preeminent centers for gynecologic oncology worldwide. While there, she received extensive training in minimally invasive techniques to perform cases via laparoscopy and via the robotic platform (Da Vinci Surgical System™). She is able to utilize these surgical techniques for a range of benign and malignant conditions, including radical hysterectomy for early cervical cancer, resection of isolated recurrences of ovarian cancer, and surgical staging with lymphadenectomy for endometrial cancer. As Memorial Sloan Kettering pioneered the protocol for sentinel lymph node (SLN) mapping in uterine carcinoma, Dr. St. Clair is well versed in the surgical techniques and research behind this evolving field, and able to offer her patients SLN mapping to decrease the morbidity associated with removal of all pelvic lymph nodes. While Dr. St. Clair is well trained in fertility-sparing surgeries, she also specializes in more extensive, radical procedures for the treatment of recurrent cancer and/or disseminated disease, as in the case of ovarian tumor debulkings. She also cares for patients with benign gynecologic conditions requiring complex pelvic surgery when referred by a general gynecologist. Dr. St. Clair has published multiple chapters and peer-reviewed articles in prominent journals; her most recent work focused on the treatment and outcomes of patients with low-volume lymph node metastasis identified at the time of sentinel lymph node mapping in endometrial cancer. She presented on the topic at a national meeting of the Society of Gynecologic Oncology in March of last year. Her other clinical research interests include preoperative work-up and perioperative management of gynecologic patients, focusing on optimizing surgical outcomes. As an academic gynecologic oncologist, she also enjoys teaching medical students and mentoring residents and fellows in and out of the operating room. Personally, Dr. St. Clair lives in Brooklyn with her husband and three children. At Columbia University Medical Center, Dr. St. Clair is able to provide her patients with state-of-the-art gynecologic cancer care while working with an exceptional team of pathologists, radiologists, medical and radiation oncologists.

As an Assistant Professor of Medicine within the Division of Hematology/Oncology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC), Dr. McGuinness specializes in the care of patients with breast cancer or who are at high risk of developing breast cancer. She is currently involved in patient care, clinical research, and education. Her research interests include the evaluation of novel imaging-based tools to refine breast cancer risk prediction and to predict which patients receive benefit from breast cancer therapies. As part of this work, she collaborates closely with computer scientists, data scientists, and breast radiologists at Columbia. She also serves as the principal investigator for multiple clinical trials at CUIMC that evaluate novel treatments for patients with breast cancer. She is actively involved in the SWOG Cancer Research Network, and serves as a member of the SWOG Prevention and Epidemiology and Breast Committees, as well as the SWOG Breast Translational Medicine Working Group. Dr. McGuinness received her bachelor of arts in Biology magna cum laude from Williams College, and her medical degree with Honor from Baylor College of Medicine, where she was elected to the Gold Humanism Honor Society. She completed both her Internal Medicine residency and Hematology/Oncology fellowship at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, during which she also served as Chief Fellow and completed a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biomedical Informatics. Dr. McGuinness is the recipient of multiple career development awards from the Conquer Cancer Foundation/American Society of Clinical Oncology and the Susan G. Komen Foundation, as well as a TRANSFORM KL2 Mentored Career Development Award.