Giving Back to His Community: Dr. Brandon Mahal’s Work on Prostate Cancer
Article Summary
- Brandon Mahal, M.D., was recently promoted to vice chair and director of the residency program for the Department of Radiation Oncology at Sylvester.
- His personal story informs his passion for helping patients with prostate cancer and leading research on health inequities.
- He was recently invited to present at the Presidential Symposium at this year’s American Society for Radiation Oncology meeting.
Although Brandon Mahal, M.D., works thousands of miles from his hometown in central California, his work is now making an impact in his community and those like it.
Dr. Mahal, an associate professor of radiation oncology at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, has made important insights into racial disparities in prostate cancer that are now informing national guidelines on screening and prevention.
As a physician, Dr. Mahal treats prostate cancer patients at Sylvester with the latest advances in radiation oncology. As a scientist, he is passionate about combatting health inequities in prostate cancer, particularly those that disproportionately affect Black men. Although he’s only four years past the end of his residency at Harvard Medical School, he’s already taken on leadership roles at Sylvester and contributes to national expert committees, including The White House’s Health Equity Leader Roundtable.
Dr. Mahal was recently appointed as vice chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology and program director for the department’s clinical residency training program. Together with the department’s new chair, Markus Bredel, M.D., Ph.D., Dr. Mahal is planning to to expand radiation oncology research areas and offerings to patients, as well as recruit the next generation of radiation oncologists.
Dr. Mahal was also recently invited to present at the Presidential Symposium at this year’s American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) meeting Sept. 29, where he’ll discuss a leading-edge approach to targeted radiation treatment for prostate cancer known as microboosting.
‘A Noble Way to Give Back’
It’s a long way from where he started.
Dr. Mahal grew up in a low-income, predominantly Hispanic agricultural community in Madera, Calif., in a neighborhood with high crime rates and gang activity. Both his older brothers were gang members and ended up in prison.
With family support and his own determination, Dr. Mahal managed to stay focused in school and went to college at UCLA, then moved across the country to enroll in medical school at Harvard. He also spent some of his childhood caring for his grandmother, who had diabetes and later died of lung cancer.
“I remember going to those doctor’s appointments with her and seeing that the doctor was someone who could help us and help our family, and that stuck with me,” said Dr. Mahal. “I always knew I wanted to give back to my community, and I saw being a physician as a very noble way to give back.”
A Focus on Prostate Cancer
Early in his training, Dr. Mahal wanted to focus on cancer.
“Growing up, I knew a lot of people in my family and community who died from various cancers,” he said. “Cancer was viewed as pretty much a universal death sentence.”
So, it was a pleasant surprise to Dr. Mahal to realize that he could make a difference in many cancer patients’ lives, even offering them curative treatments, in some cases. He chose to focus on prostate cancer because it is so common and because it represents one of the largest health disparities among cancer types in the U.S., especially for Black men. He originally thought he’d go into cancer surgery and was preparing to apply for surgery training programs when he did a rotation in radiation oncology.
“I really became enchanted with the technology, the approach to patient care and the amount of time you get to spend with patients,” Dr. Mahal said.
At the ASTRO conference symposium, he’ll present a talk on the microboost technology for prostate cancer. This innovative method, which Dr. Mahal offers to patients at Sylvester, uses MRI imaging to identify cancerous regions in the prostate gland and deliver high-dose radiation directly to the tumor, sparing healthy parts of the gland. The method, when combined with lower-dose radiation to the entire prostate, results in better outcomes without increasing side effects.
A Passion for Cancer Research
Before starting his residency in radiation oncology, Dr. Mahal spent a year doing research at Harvard. He developed a niche in cancer disparities, with a focus on prostate cancer. At the time, not many people were studying racial disparities in prostate cancer. He encountered skepticism about the direction of his scientific vision.
He’s glad he followed his passions toward improving health equities, he said. His year of dedicated research with his mentor Paul Nguyen, M.D., also propelled him toward a career combining clinical care and research. Today, the study of racial disparities in prostate cancer is a growing field. Dr. Mahal is proud to have done his part in helping bring these inequities to the forefront.
“All of this is a result of the work I put in for all those years and it’s so fulfilling to realize that it’s now helping men at a global scale,” he said.
His work is part of several national guidelines and committees and has helped influence national policy. One landmark study published last year in The Lancet Digital Health showed that differences in patient care, not genetics, are likely the underlying cause of disparities in outcomes for prostate cancer in men of African descent versus men of European descent.
Outside of work, Dr. Mahal focuses on his family — his wife, 6-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son. They love the Miami music and food scenes, he said, and he and his kids spend a lot of time at local beaches and parks and “acting silly and dancing.”
Tags: ASTRO, cancer disparities, cancer research, Dr. Brandon Mahal, Health Equity, prostate cancer, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center