Scott R. Plotkin

Scott R. Plotkin, MD, PhD, is the current Giovanni Armenise Harvard Professor of Neurology, Neurology, Harvard Medical School. He was a neuro-oncology fellow at Mass General and joined the MGH faculty in 2003. In 2005, he was appointed director of the neurofibromatosis clinic. He is Executive Director, Pappas Center for Neuro-Oncology, Mass General Cancer Center; and Director, MGH/DFCI/BWH Neuro-Oncology Fellowship Program. He serves as Chair of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) Section on Neuro-Oncology; chair of the Neurofibromatosis (NF) and Schwannomatosis (SWN) Genes Variant Curation Expert Panel; chair of the Clinical Care Advisory Board of the Children’s Tumor Foundation; and co-chair of the Society for Neuro-Oncology Education Committee.

His work is focused on research investigations on genetic syndromes that predispose individuals to develop tumors of the nervous system, including NF1, NF2 and SWN and on studying new drugs for the treatment of NF2-related tumors. He founded and chairs the Response Evaluation in Neurofibromatosis and Schwannomatosis (REiNS) International Collaboration, an international effort to develop new standardized response criteria for determining treatment response in patients with NF1, NF2 and SWN, and developing clinical trial endpoints appropriate for NF that can lead to drug approval. Persons with the NF2-related SWN develop multiple tumor types, including vestibular schwannomas, meningiomas, and ependymomas. These tumors cause significant disability, including complete deafness and paralysis, if untreated. In 2020, his team opened the INTUITT-NF2 trial, a novel platform-basket trial that brings together academia (Mass General), industry (Takeda), and a research foundation (Children’s Tumor Foundation) to study multiple new drugs for patients with either vestibular schwannomas, meningiomas, or ependymomas.

In his role as chair of the NF2 Committee for the Department of Defense Neurofibromatosis Clinical Trials Consortium, a collection of about 20 U.S. institutions that collaborate to host clinical trials for NF, he helps decide which drugs are ready for human clinical trials in the United States, and plans to launch one of the first preventative trials in NF by studying the ability of losartan, a common blood pressure medicine, to prevent hearing loss in adults and children with NF2-related SWN.

He works with the Society for Neuro-Oncology and the AAN to lead the national match program for neuro-oncology trainees, and founded and led an annual training session at the SNO Annual Meeting titled “Neuro-Oncology Fellow and Early Clinician/Investigator Career Retreat.”

Website: Scott R. Plotkin