Member Biography

Dr. Schneider is a medical oncologist with clinical expertise in breast cancer and precision oncology and has aligned research interests in therapeutic individualization and disparities.

He is the founding director of the IU Health Precision Genomics Program, which has performed comprehensive next-generation sequencing (NGS) on more than 10,000 advanced cancer patients with intent to direct therapy options. He serves as the vice president of precision oncology for the IU Health system to best coordinate implementation and oversight of operations across sites. This program has served as a blueprint for several other successful precision medicine programs across the United States.

He was named as an inaugural member of the prestigious Komen Scientific Advisory Council and led a multi-institutional project with the support of a Susan G. Komen Promise Award. This work included comprehensive genomic evaluation across three randomized Phase III adjuvant breast cancer trials for which he made several sentinel observations.

He uncovered a higher likelihood of therapy-associated toxicity for patients of African descent (using ancestral classification) and found that germline genetic variants might further refine risk for one of the most clinically important toxicities, taxane-induced peripheral neuropathy. This work led to the development and conduct of EAZ171 (PI Schneider), one of the first NCI-cooperative group trials to focus accrual on Black patients with breast cancer with the goal of overcoming disparities by personalizing therapy in the curative setting. EAZ171 demonstrated personalization of therapy minimizes toxicity and dose reductions (Schneider et al, JCO 2024).

He also led the first post-neoadjuvant trial (BRE12-158) for patients with high-risk triple negative breast cancer to test a personalized approach using NGS to guide therapy versus the treatment of physician’s choice. BRE12-158 found ctDNA status to be one of the most significant predictors of outcome in the curative setting (Schneider et al, JCO 2022). This trial has guided the construct of the multi-site PERSEVERE trial for this same patient population.

He has more than 130 peer-reviewed publications. This work has achieved the designation of “media worthy” three times at international symposia and is the result of strong patient engagement and collaboration with diverse and talented colleagues.