New investigator: Benjamin Teply, MD

This profile is part of a series to highlight the researchers who will be honored at a ceremony on March 9 for UNMC’s Scientist Laureate, Research Leadership, Distinguished Scientist, New Investigator and Community Service to Research Award recipients.

• Name: Benjamin Teply, MD
• Title: Associate professor, UNMC Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Oncology and Hematology
• Joined UNMC: July 2017
• Hometown: Omaha

Please describe your research focus in three words or less:

Improving cancer care

Why is research important in the world today?

The field of medical oncology has made many advances in recent years, yet there are so many ways that we need to improve our care for our patients. The tools that I use in the clinic today were made possible by yesterday’s clinical trials. Those clinical trials were made possible by basic and translational research. The research being performed today will lead to new diagnostic and therapeutic tools to improve the lives of our patients.

My research will make a difference because:

In prostate cancer, we now have multiple classes of therapeutics that can be employed. Yet we don’t have good ways to optimally select which combinations or sequences of therapies to use. In our research, we are exploring mechanisms of secondary resistance to several commonly used therapies — essentially looking for ways to get more out of established medicines. In the future, we envision a new understanding of the underlying drivers of resistant prostate cancer and new clinical procedures to select patients for specific therapy combinations.

The best advice I’ve ever received is:

Take your vacation.

Three things you may not know about me are:

• I previously worked on PSMA-targeting nanoparticle technology that made it to phase 2 studies in advanced prostate cancer patients.
• I watched well over 100 Red Sox baseball games (mostly on TV, some in person) during the 2004 season.
• When I was a kid, my dream job was building model aircraft for NASA.