Steven Balk, MD, PhD

About Steven Balk, MD, PhD

Dr. Steven Balk is a professor of medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Dr. Balk’s main objective has been to conduct disease focused integrated basic and translational research and to equip MD and/or PhD trainees to do the same. The initial focus of his lab was immunology, but in 1993 he initiated a major research effort in prostate cancer (PCa). His lab developed methods to analyze advanced metastatic PCa through the use of bone marrow biopsies and showed that one mechanism for disease progression after androgen deprivation therapy was through mutations in the androgen receptor (AR). In subsequent studies his lab has further established a critical role for AR in PCa that relapses after androgen deprivation therapy, and identified mechanisms that mediate AR reactivation (including enhanced androgen synthesis by tumor cells). These results have led directly to successful clinical trials with translational as well as clinical endpoints.

His teaching efforts have focused primarily on exposing clinical fellows to basic research and mentoring them in the conduct of translational and clinical research, and in training basic research PhDs. His major clinical contributions are currently in the expansion of our clinical database and tissue bank for PCa and in the design and execution of clinical trials.