Dr. Vered Stearns completed the equivalent of a B.S. degree at the Tel Aviv University, Sackler Faculty of Medicine in 1989. After relocating to the United States, Dr. Stearns transferred to and graduated from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School with a medical degree (M.D.) in 1992. She completed a residency in Internal Medicine and a fellowship in Medical Oncology at the Georgetown University where she developed an interest in translational breast cancer research and spent two additional years as a research fellow.

Dr. Stearns was a faculty member at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Georgetown University, and at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan before joining the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins in 2002. She remained at Johns Hopkins and served in a variety of roles, including co-Director of the Breast Cancer Program, co-Director of the Breast and Ovarian Cancer Program,  Director, Women’s Malignancies Disease Group and inaugural Medical Director of the Under Armour Breast Health Innovation Center, until being recruited to Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian Hospital in 2023. At Weill Cornell Medicine, Dr. Stearns is Director of Translational Breast Cancer Research at the Department of Medicine, and Associate Director for Clinical Services at the Meyer Cancer Center. Her role in the Meyer Cancer Center will allow her to develop programs and to mentor team members across diseases throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.

Dr. Stearns’s long-term research goal is to improve current therapies by individualizing strategies for the treatment and prevention of breast cancer. The main focus of Dr. Stearns’s research includes the utilization of biomarkers to predict response to standard regimens used to treat and prevent breast cancer, and to introduce new interventions.

Dr. Stearns and colleagues from the Consortium On Breast Cancer Pharamcogenomics (COBRA) Group were the first to evaluate the role of genetic variants in candidate genes such as CYP2D6 in tamoxifen metabolism, safety, and efficacy. This work has been extended to evaluate the role of genetic variants in aromatase inhibitor associated outcomes. She has also conducted clinical investigations of epigenetic modifying agents across the breast cancer continuum. She is evaluating whether histone deacetylase inhibitors enhance response to immunotherapy. Having demonstrated that methylation markers predict breast cancer risk, she is evaluating whether natural compounds can reverse these modifications.

Dr. Stearns has received numerous grants and awards to fund her innovative research. She was a recipient of early career awards including a Clinical Research Training Grant from the American Cancer Society, and was one of the first five recipients of the prestigious Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award. Subsequently she was the inaugural recipient of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Advanced Clinical Research Award.

She served as a Board Member of the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers (NAPBC) for the American College of Surgeons (ACS), and was elected in 2020 as Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (FASCO). Her work has already had a positive impact on the lives of many women, and in 2017, Dr. Stearns was selected by Forbes as one of 27 top breast cancer oncologists in the United States. Dr. Stearns is Vice Chair of the NRG Translational Science Committee, and Co-Chair of the NRG Breast Translational Working Group. In these roles, she works closely with Group members as they investigate correlative biomarkers obtained through breast cancer trials.