Prof Rebecca Dent

About

Dr Rebecca Dent is Deputy CEO (Clinical) at the National Cancer Center Singapore (NCCS) at SingHealth and a senior consultant in the breast medical oncology service, as well as Professor at Duke-NUS Medical School.  Her main research interest is in the field of breast cancer, focusing specifically on early, large operable, locally advanced and metastatic triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). 

 

In February 2011, she began the next phase of her career as a consultant and now senior consultant at the National Cancer Center in Singapore (NCCS). Recognizing the need for a pan-Asian regional educational interaction she co-founded and co-chaired over fourteen Asia Pacific Breast Cancer Summits. This is a multidisciplinary meeting for the treatment of breast cancer which attracts over 2000 attendees from over 25 countries. She is a global PI and/or steering committee member for a number of large international trials in TNBC. This TNBC research has been cited extensively with the number of citations now more than 15,000 and an h-index of more than 60. She has serviced on the scientific Committee for numerous scientific committee meetings including the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), and the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).  

 

She is most proud to be the recipient of the ESMO Women for Oncology Award 2021 and was elected to serve on the ESMO Nomination Committee for 2023-2025 whose main responsibility is to select the next ESMO President. In 2024, she received the Duke-NUS Master Academic Clinician award and she served as the Scientific Chair for the ESMO Congress at Barcelona 2024. Most recently she serves on the Communication Committee for the American Society of Clinical Oncology from 2025-2028 and was inducted as a Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in 2025 (FASCO).

Education and Training

• Master of Science, Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics - Department of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation, University of Toronto 
• Doctor of Medicine - Faculty of Medicine, McMaster University 
• Bachelor’s Degree, 1st Class Honours - Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
  

Professional Appointments and Committee Memberships

• Deputy Chief Executive Officer (Clinical) 
• Academic Vice-Chair (Clinical Services), ONCO ACP 
• Lead, NCCS Medical Board Meeting 
• Member, Duke-NUS Appointment, Promotion & Tenure Committee 
• Scientific Committee Congress Chair, ESMO 2024

Awards

• Master Academic Clinician, Duke-NUS - 2024 
• Superstar Award: Exemplar Leader, Singapore Health Quality Service Awards - 2023 
• ESMO Women for Oncology Award, ESMO Congress - 2021 
• Star Award, SingHealth Quality Service Award - 2020 
• Outstanding Clinician Award, SingHealth Excellence Awards -2019 
• Leadership Development Programme, ASCO - 2015

Research Interests

• Locally advanced breast cancer 
• Triple negative breast cancer 
• Clinical trials 
• New drug development 
• Biomarkers

Research Trials

• A Phase III Randomised Study to Evaluate Dato-DXd and Durvalumab for Neoadju-vant/Adjuvant Treatment of Triple-Negative or Hormone Receptor-low/HER2-negative Breast Cancer (TROPION-Breast 04) 
• Sacituzumab Tirumotecan (MK-2870) Plus Pembrolizumab Versus TPC in TNBC Who Did Not Achieve pCR (MK-2870-012)
• A Study of Dato-DXd Versus Investigator's Choice Chemotherapy in Patients With Locally Recurrent Inoperable or Metastatic Triple-negative Breast Cancer, Who Are Not Candidates for PD-1/PD-L1 Inhibitor Therapy (TROPION-Breast02) 
• Study of Pembrolizumab (MK-3475) Plus Chemotherapy vs Placebo Plus Chemother-apy as Neoadjuvant Therapy and Pembrolizumab vs Placebo as Adjuvant Therapy in Participants With Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) (MK-3475-522/KEYNOTE-522)

Publications

• RA Dent, J Cortés, YH Park, E Muñoz-Couselo, SB Kim, J Sohn, S Im, E Holgado, T Foukakis, S Kümmel, J Yearley, A Wang, M Nebozhyn, L Huang, R Cristescu, P Jelinic, V Karantza, P Schmid. Molecular determinants of response to neoadjuvant pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy in patients with high-risk, early-stage, triple-negative breast cancer: exploratory analysis of the open-label, multicohort phase 1b KEYNOTE-173 study. Breast Cancer Research. Mar 2025; 27 (35). 
• RA Dent, R Hui, YH Park, P Schmid, J Wei, JA Mejia, W Pan, J Cortés, HL McArthur. 24TiP A phase III, randomized study of adjuvant sacituzumab tirumotecan (sac-TMT) plus pembrolizumab vs treatment of physician’s choice (TPC) in patients with TNBC who received neoadjuvant therapy and did not achieve a pathological complete re-sponse (pCR) at surgery. Annals of Oncology. Dec 2024; 3 (4) S1413. 
• RA Dent, S Kim, M Oliveira, C Barrios, J O’Shaughnessy, S J Isakoff, S Saji, R Freitas-Junior, M Philco, I Bondarenko, Q Lian, D Bradley, H Hinton, MJ Wongchen-ko, SJ Reilly, N Turner. Ipatasertib plus Paclitaxel for Patients with PIK3CA/AKT1/PTEN-Altered Locally Advanced Unresectable or Metastatic Tri-ple-Negative Breast Cancer in the IPATunity130 Phase III Trial. Clinical Cancer Re-search. Oct 2024; 30 (19), 4329-4338. 
• RA Dent, J Cortés, L Pusztai, H McArthur, S Kümmel, J Bergh, C Denkert, YH Park, R Hui, N Harbeck, M Takahashi, M Untch, PA Fasching, F Cardoso, A Haiderali, L Jia, A Martin Nguyen, W Pan, J O’Shaughnessy, P Schmid. Neoadjuvant pembroli-zumab plus chemotherapy/adjuvant pembrolizumab for early-stage triple-negative breast cancer: quality-of-life results from the randomized KEYNOTE-522 study. JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Oct 2024; 116 (10), 1654-1663. 
• A Bardia, X Hu, RA Dent, K Yonemori, CH Barrios, JA O’Shaughnessy, H Wildiers, JY Pierga, Q Zhang, C Saura, L Biganzoli, J Sohn, SA Im, C Lévy, W Jacot, N Beg-bie, J Ke, G Patel, G Curigliano. Trastuzumab Deruxtecan after Endocrine Therapy in Metastatic Breast Cancer. New England Journal of Medicine. Sep 2024; 391 (22): 2110-2122. 
• P Schmid, J Cortes, RA Dent, H McArthur, L Pusztai, S Kümmel, C Denkert, YH Park, R Hui, N Harbeck, M Takahashi, S Im, M Untch, P Fasching, M Mouret-Reynier, T Foukakis, M Ferreira, F Cardoso, X Zhou, V Karantza, K Tryfonidis, G Aktan, J O’Shaughnessy. Overall Survival with Pembrolizumab in Early-Stage Triple-Negative Breast Cancer. New England Journal of Medicine. Sep 2024; 391 (21): 1981-1991. 
• RA Dent, F André, A Gonçalves, M Martin Jimenez, P Schmid, F Schütz, S Kummel, SM Swain, A Bilici, D Loirat, R Villalobos Valencia, SA Im, YH Park, ZK Machackova, J Mouta, RJ Deurloo, X Gan, M Fan, A Swat, J Cortés. 180O IMpassion132 double-blind randomised phase III trial of chemotherapy (CT) ± atezolizumab (atezo) for ear-ly-relapsing unresectable locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (aTNBC). ESMO Open. May 2024; 9 (4). 
• TJY Tan, S Sammons, YH Im, L She, K Mundy, R Bigelow, T Traina, C Anders, J Yeong, E Renzulli, S Kim, RA Dent. Phase II DORA Study of Olaparib with or without Durvalumab as a Chemotherapy-Free Maintenance Strategy in Platinum-Pretreated Advanced Triple-Negative Breast Cancer. Clinical Cancer Research. 1 Apr 2024; 30 (7), 1240-1247. 
• P Schmid, N Turner, C Barrios, S Isakoff, S Kim, MP Sablin, S Saji, P Savas, G Vidal, M Oliveira, J O'Shaughnessy, A Italiano, E Espinosa, V Boni, S White, B Rojas, R Freitas-Junior, Y Chae, I Bondarenko, J Lee, C Torres Mattos, J Luis Martinez Rodri-guez, L Lam, S Jones, SJ Reilly, X Huang, K Shah, RA Dent. First-Line Ipatasertib, Atezolizumab, and Taxane Triplet for Metastatic Triple-Negative Breast Cancer: Clini-cal and Biomarker Results. Clinical Cancer Research. 15 Feb 2024; 30 (4), 767-778. 
• Schmid P, Cortes J, Dent R, Pusztai L, McArthur H, Kümmel S, Bergh J, Denkert C, Park YH, Hui R, Harbeck N. Event-free Survival with Pembrolizumab in Early Triple-Negative Breast Cancer. New England Journal of Medicine. 2022 Feb 10;386(6):556-67.