Yolonda Colson, MD, Ph.D.
Chief, Division of Thoracic Surgery
Hermes C. Grillo Professor of Surgery
Massachusetts General Hospital
Dr. Colson is the Chief for the Division of Thoracic Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. In addition to her cardiothoracic surgical training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, her academic training includes a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an M.D. from Mayo Medical School, and a Ph.D. and general surgery residency at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the recipient of the George H.A. Clowes, Jr. Research Career Development Award from the American College of Surgeons, the Edward M. Kennedy Award for Health Care Innovation from CIMIT, an Officer and Exam Chair for the American Board of Thoracic Surgery and was Co-chair of the 2015 American Association for Thoracic Surgery Annual Meeting. She has a specific clinical interest in increasing and improving the identification and treatment of lung cancer in the operating room for lung cancer treatment, and in understanding the unique differences of lung cancer in women.
She is co-inventor on three awarded patents and has received over twenty foundation grants and seven R29/R01 grants from the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute. Dr. Colson's research focuses on the development of unique mechanisms of polymer and nanoparticle drug delivery aimed at preventing cancer recurrence, and the investigation of novel methods to identify hidden tumor that has spread to nearby lymph nodes. She has over 135 peer-reviewed publications highlighting her previous work in transplantation and her most recent investigations in sentinel lymph nodes in lung cancer and polymer-mediated drug delivery.
Publications
Major Research Interests: Transplantation Immunology and Tolerance Induction, Bone Marrow Chimerism, Hematopoietic Stem Cell Biology, Innate and Adaptive Immunity, and Lung Cancer.
Tsai LL, Chu NQ, Blessing WA, Moonsamy P, Colson YL. Lung Cancer in Women. Ann Thorac Surg 2021.
Colby AH, Liu R, Doyle RP, Merting A, Zhang H, Savage N, Chu NQ, Hollister BA, McCulloch W, Burdette JE, Pearce CJ, Liu K, Oberlies NH, Colson YL, Grinstaff MW. Pilot-scale production of expansile nanoparticles: Practical methods for clinical scale-up. J Control Release 2021; 337:144-154.
Dominas C, Bhagavatula S, Stover EH, Deans K, Larocca C, Colson YL, Peruzzi PP, Kibel AS, Hata N, Tsai LL, Hung YP, Packard R, Jonas O. The translational and regulatory development of an implantable microdevice for multiple drug sensitivity measurements in cancer patients. 2021.
Phillips WW, Copeland J, Hofferberth SC, Armitage JR, Fox S, Kruithoff M, de Forcrand C, Catalano PJ, Lathan CS, Weissman JS, Odell DD, Colson YL. Lung Cancer Strategist Program: A novel care delivery model to improve timeliness of diagnosis and treatment in high-risk patients. Healthc (Amst) 2021; 9:100563.
Mäkinen N, Zhou M, Bemus M, Nevin J, Nag A, Chen R, Colson YL, Thorner AR, Oxnard GR, Meyerson M, Sholl LM. Genomic Evolution in a Patient With Lung Adenocarcinoma With a Germline T790M Mutation. JTO Clin Res Rep 2021; 2:100146.
Colson YL, Shepard JO, Lennes IT. New USPSTF Guidelines for Lung Cancer Screening: Better but Not Enough. JAMA Surg 2021.
Al Subeh ZY, Chu NQ, Korunes-Miller JT, Tsai LL, Graf TN, Hung YP, Pearce CJ, Grinstaff MW, Colby AH, Colson YL, Oberlies NH. Delivery of eupenifeldin via polymer-coated surgical buttresses prevents local lung cancer recurrence. J Control Release 2021; 331:260-269.
Mayne NR, Elser HC, Darling AJ, Raman V, Liou DZ, Colson YL, D'Amico TA, Yang CJ. Estimating the Impact of Extended Delay to Surgery for Stage I Non-small-cell Lung Cancer on Survival. Ann Surg 2021; 273:850-857.
Villalba JA, Shih AR, Sayo TMS, Kunitoki K, Hung YP, Ly A, Kem M, Hariri LP, Muniappan A, Gaissert HA, Colson YL, Lanuti MD, Mino-Kenudson M. Accuracy and Reproducibility of Intra-Operative Assessment on Tumor Spread Through Air Spaces (STAS) in Stage 1 Lung Adenocarcinomas. J Thorac Oncol 2020.
Phillips WW, Gill RR, Mazzola E, Armitage JR, de Forcrand C, Colson YL, Gibney BC. Impact of Nodule Density in Females with Sublobar Resection for Stage IA Adenocarcinoma. Ann Thorac Surg 2020.
Phillips WW, Weiss KD, Digesu CS, Gill RR, Mazzola E, Tsukada H, Schumacher LY, Colson YL. Finding the "True" N0 Cohort: Technical Aspects of Near-infrared Sentinel Lymph Node Mapping in Non-small Cell Lung Cancer. Ann Surg 2020; 272:583-588.