Specialty
At the Atlanta VA Medical Center, Dr. El Osta is leading the expansion of the precision oncology program, a national initiative intended to bring personalized and cutting-edge treatment to veterans diagnosed with advanced lung cancer and other solid tumors.
Titles and Roles
- Assistant Professor, Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology
- Emory University School of Medicine
- Medical Oncologist
- Head and Neck Cancer
- Lung Cancer
- Thyroid Cancer
- Phase I Clinical Trials Unit
- Research Program
- Discovery and Developmental Therapeutics
Biography
Badi El Osta, MD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Emory University School of Medicine. Board certified in medical oncology and palliative medicine, Dr. El Osta specializes in the prevention and treatment of head and neck, and lung cancers. Since joining the Emory faculty in 2016, he has been actively involved in patient care and clinical research, as well as in the education of Emory University oncology fellows and medical residents at the Atlanta VA Medical Center.
Dr. El Osta serves as the chair of the Cancer Committee for the Atlanta VA Healthcare System. He is a clinical member of the Discovery and Developmental Therapeutics research program at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. He also serves as a member of the Biomedical Committee of the Institutional Review Board at Emory University.
Dr. El Osta holds professional memberships with American Society of Clinical Oncology, Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program, and Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group.
Education
Dr. El Osta received his MD from Saint Joseph's University School of Medicine in Beirut, Lebanon. He completed his residency at Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thereafter, he completed three fellowships: Hematology/Oncology at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, Georgia; Investigational Cancer Therapeutics (phase 1 clinical trials) and Palliative Care at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.
Research
Dr. El Osta is building his research portfolio to focus on biology and tumor microenvironment, conduct of therapeutic clinical trials and improving outcomes in patients with lung, and head and neck cancers.
He is interested in learning about the impact of KRAS mutations and its associated co-mutations on survival in patients with lung cancer. He is interested in precision oncology, developing combination therapies to treat refractory head, neck and lung cancer as well immune biomarkers that predict response to immune therapy.
He is designing phase 1 clinical trials by translating strategies to alleviate the mechanisms of resistance to immune and targeted therapies in refractory cancers and to identify biomarkers to predict response to therapy. He has co-designed three investigator-initiated trials combining targeted and immune therapies in solid malignancies, one of them was recently presented at American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting and published in Cancer Discovery.
He is also interested in the economics of phase 1 clinical trials and the identification of cost-control strategies to develop a more cost-effective organizational model.
Publications
Dr. El Osta has co-authored more than 15 peer reviewed scientific papers in leading journals including Cancer Discovery and Journal of Clinical Oncology. He has co-authored abstracts for presentation at national and international professional meetings.
Publications Publication Date
Awards
Dr. El Osta's awards and honors include:
- ASCO Foundation Pain Merit Award, 2006
- ASCO Foundation Oncology Merit Award, 2007