Dr. Barbieri is a urologic surgeon whose long-term goal is definition of distinct molecular classes of prostate cancer, functional modeling of these subtypes to define drivers and therapeutic vulnerability, and translation of this information to care of prostate cancer patients.

He received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and then his MD/PhD at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where he studied transcriptional targets of p53 family members. His research at Weill Cornell led to the identification and characterization of a molecular subclass of prostate cancer defined by recurrent mutations in the E3 ubiquitin ligase SPOP. SPOP mutant prostate cancer represents about 10% of prostate cancer, is exclusively ETS negative, and shows distinct patterns of copy number alterations, gene expression, and methylation. The Barbieri lab continues to further investigate the SPOP mutant class prostate cancer, building models to defining the biology and study additional drivers in this subtype (including deletion of the chromatin remodeler CHD1). An additional focus of his work involves pre-surgical therapeutic trials for prostate cancer patients, using next generation profiling to define predictors of response and mechanisms of resistance. The long-term goal of all this work is to determine therapeutic susceptibility and clinical significance for patients.