Greg Armstrong, MD, MSCE, is a member of the Department of Epidemiology and Cancer Control at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and the principal investigator of the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS). The CCSS is a multi-institutional NCI-funded cohort study (U24 CA55727) which has successfully established and followed >35,000 adult survivors of childhood cancer and is our national resource for childhood cancer survivorship research. Among the many high impact findings from CCSS was his own recent identification that historical reduction in therapeutic exposure for low-risk cancer patients has extended the lifespan of survivors by reducing mortality attributable to the long-term effects of cancer therapies (NEJM, 2016).

Dr. Armstrong’s personal lines of research, directed at identifying and improving long-term cardiac outcomes in aging adult survivors of childhood cancer, has provided novel identification of the high prevalence of pulmonary hypertension among aging adult survivors exposed to chest directed radiation (JCO 2013), and of the potentiation of risk for heart failure by development of traditional CV risk factors as survivors age across the lifespan (JCO 2013). The latter is important as it identified modifiable targets for current R01 funded interventions that may reduce risk for heart failure. Additionally, in the largest study of its kind to date, Dr. Armstrong utilized echo-derived myocardial strain for screening/early detection of subclinical cardiac disease (JACC 2015). His R01 (CA157838) will identify whether strain improves detection of subclinical heart failure over use of ejection fraction-based assessment, with the goal of improving outcomes for survivors.