Popular Science recently selected UTSW physician-scientist Sangeetha Reddy, M.D., M.S.C.I., Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) Scholar, as one of this year’s Brilliant 10 in the magazine’s national competition for up-and-coming minds.

Dr. Reddy conducts clinical trials and is a translational investigator focused on using immunotherapy to improve outcomes for breast cancer patients. Currently, she is working to identify treatment strategies for patients with high-risk breast cancers such as triple-negative breast cancer using an approach she calls “bedside to bench and back.” This approach involves making observations in patients and their cancer samples, learning more about their cancer biology and testing treatments in the lab, then using this information to design clinical trials for the patients.

The strategy resulted in identifying a novel combination of three drugs that can kick-start the immune response against triple-negative breast cancers. Dr. Reddy tested the approach, which uses chemotherapy, a CD40 agonist, and an Flt3 ligand, in a mouse model and found that it cut mouse tumor growth in half compared with chemotherapy alone. A phase 1 clinical trial to determine safety and efficacy in patients began enrolling this year (NCT05029999).

Dr. Reddy, a member of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, completed her undergraduate degree at Harvard University, followed by medical training at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She then received internal medicine training and earned a Master of Science in clinical investigation at Northwestern University. Dr. Reddy also completed a fellowship in hematology/oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center. She joined UT Southwestern in February 2019 with a First-Time, Tenure-Track Award from CPRIT and is a Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator.