This is unpublished

Alexandra
Ikeguchi
MD

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Physician & Research Faculty
Pinned
Academic
Clinical Associate Professor, Clinical Research Division, Fred Hutch
Clinical Associate Professor, Division of Hematology and Oncology, University of Washington
Sites of Practice
Fred Hutch Cancer Center – Sloan Clinic

Education, Training, Board Certifications

  • MD, Columbia University Physicians and Surgeons
  • Residency, Internal Medicine, Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center
  • Fellowship, Hematology/Oncology, Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center
  • Internal Medicine, American Board of Internal Medicine
  • Medical Oncology, American Board of Internal Medicine
  • Hematology, American Board of Internal Medicine

Clinical Expertise

  • Melanoma
  • General medical oncology

Affiliations

Fred Hutch Cancer Center – Provider

PUBLICATIONS

pubMed

RESEARCH AND/OR CLINICAL INTERESTS

From the time of her first exposure to research in the biologic sciences, Dr. Ikeguchi has been fascinated by the processes by which a single cell can divide and differentiate into organ systems with diverse functions. As a related concept, the pathology in this normal developmental process that ultimately leads to malignancy has been extremely interesting to her. As she proceeded through her education, Dr. Ikeguchi pursued this focus through specialty training in Hematology and Oncology and did her fellowship research in a basic science lab studying protein-protein interactions between the ABL oncoprotein and its regulator, ABI1.

For family and personal reasons, she initially elected to start her career in pure clinical practice. Her years of direct patient care ultimately helped her progress towards her research goal in that they made her acutely aware of cancers for which established therapies are completely inadequate and in which development of new treatments will have the most impact.

Dr. Ikeguchi therefore arrived at her present focus in the biology of melanoma, one of the cancers most resistant to standard chemotherapy. 

She established current treatment standards in several clinical scenarios, including first line therapy for BRAF mutant melanoma, management of PD1 relapsed/refractory melanoma, and neoadjuvant therapy for clinically lymph node positive melanoma. She also established treatment standards for uveal melanoma. It has long been recognized that uveal melanoma has distinct genetics/genomics, biology, and clinical outcome from cutaneous melanoma and does not respond to the same therapies. Her work contributed to the first FDA approved therapy specifically for uveal melanoma.