Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Limor Appelbaum MD is a Radiation Oncologist and currently serves as Staff Scientist in the Department of Radiation Oncology Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Instructor at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Appelbaum's goal is to increase early cancer detection rates by building and clinically implementing cancer risk prediction models across diverse populations Towards this goal her research focuses on developing, validating, and deploying cancer risk models using electronic health record (EHR) data in collaboration with Prof. Martin Rinard's group from MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Her preliminary model for Pancreatic Duct Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) developed on BIDMC data and validated on Partners Healthcare data was published in the European Journal of Cancer. Recent work in collaboration with a federated network company utilizes multi-institutional EHR data to develop and externally validate PDAC risk models (eBioMedicine Nov 2023). It also aims to establish a path towards clinical implementation of such models by deployment and prospective validation within the federated network platform. Dr. Appelbaum is also currently leading a study at BIDMC which is prospectively validating the PDAC model and recruiting model-assigned high-risk patients for biomarker analysis. Additional work focuses on developing cancer risk prediction models for other cancers such as Hepatocellular Carcinoma, gastric and ovarian carcinoma, as well as prediction of surgical outcomes to help guide treatment decisions. She has received funding from the Joint Center for Radiation Therapy Harvard Medical School, the Prevent Cancer Foundation, the Coverys Community Healthcare Foundation, and the Innovation in Cancer Informatics Discovery Grant Award for her work.

Dr. Appelbaum received her MD from Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary and completed her Internship year at Soroka University Medical Center, Israel. She completed her Radiation Oncology Residency at Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center and then served as a Senior Radiation Oncologist there before coming to Boston. She completed her clinical research fellowship at BIDMC.