Dr. Lenz is the Associate Director for Clinical Research and Co-leader of the Translational Science Program at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of Keck Medicine of USC and Co-Director of the Center for Cancer Drug Development at USC Norris. He is also Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine and the J Terrence Lanni Chair for Cancer Research in the Division of Medical Oncology with Keck School of Medicine of USC.

An active researcher, Dr. Lenz’s National Cancer Institute-funded laboratory is developing novel agents in his preclinical models in GI cancer. As a transformational clinical investigator and translational scientist, Dr. Lenz was the first to lead the first prospective randomized Phase II trials using gene expression from FFPE specimens. He also discovered that primary tumor location of colorectal cancer (CRC) is an independent predictive and prognostic marker, now in the NCNN guidelines. Dr. Lenz accelerates translational and clinical research and provides training and mentoring in the design and implementation of investigator-initiated trials.

Dr. Lenz earned his M.D. degree at the Johannes-Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, Germany. In 1991, he completed his internship, residency, and fellowship training at the Eberhardt Karls Universität in Tübingen, Germany. He obtained special fellowship training at Universität Wien (Austria), George Washington University and Harvard Medical School. He has published over 570 peer reviewed manuscripts with an h-index of 113.