OncoInfluencers: Dr. Rana McKay – Inspiring Journey in GU Oncology

Dr. Rana McKay joins host Gevorg Tamamyan on OncoInfluencers to share her inspiring journey in oncology. A professor of medicine and urology at UC San Diego and co-leader of the GU Oncology Program at Moores Cancer Center, Dr. McKay reflects on how her mother’s experience with cancer motivated her career path.

She discusses her academic journey from the University of Florida to Johns Hopkins and Dana-Farber, where mentors like Dr. Mary-Ellen Taplin greatly influenced her research and clinical approach. Now a mentor herself, Dr. McKay emphasizes the value of a supportive network in fostering success. A leader in GU oncology, she reveals how she balances her career with family, the impact of the ASCO Leadership Development Program, and her candidacy for the ASCO nominating committee. Tune in for Dr. McKay’s insights on mentorship, career development, and the future of oncology.

Gevorg Tamamyan is the Editor-in-chief of OncoDaily, President-Elect of SIOP Asia Continental Branch and Pediatric Oncology East and Mediterranean (POEM) Group, and the CEO of the Immune Oncology Research Institute (IMMONC). He is the Chairman and Professor of the department of Haematology and Pediatric Oncology at Yerevan State Medical University.

He is a Co-Founder and Board Member of the Armenian Association of Hematology and Oncology, City of Smile Charitable Foundation, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board of the Institute of Cancer and Crisis, the Former President of the Harvard Club of Armenia.

Dr. Rana McKay is a board-certified medical oncologist and specializes in urogenital cancers, offering treatment for bladder, kidney, prostate, and testicular cancer patients. Leading a multi-disciplinary prostate cancer clinic at UC San Diego, she ensures comprehensive care through collaboration with urologists and radiation oncologists.

As an associate professor, Dr. McKay mentors students and conducts research on clinical trials and novel biomarkers for genitourinary malignancies. Dr. McKay is a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Association for Cancer Research.

00:00 Recap
01:37 Passion-Driven Success
02:15 Personal Journey to Oncology
05:20 Path to Oncology & Clinical Research
10:25 Mentorship Across Career Stages
13:45 Leadership Development Insights
16:30 Balancing Family and Career
20:00 Conclusion

Gevorg Tamamyan: Hi everyone, welcome back to Onco Daily. Today on Onco Influencers is a dear friend of mine, Professor Rana McKay. Welcome Rana, thank you for being with us today.
Rana is a professor of medicine and urology at University of California, San Diego. She’s the associate director of clinical sciences and co-leader of the geo-oncology program at the Moores Cancer Center. She’s a medical oncologist who specializes in treating people with urogenital cancer.

She’s very well known in the field, so she does not need much of introduction, and I’ll leave all this, her accomplishments, to explore during our interview. Rana, thank you very much for having a time with us, and welcome to OncoDaily.

Rana McKay: Thank you so much for having me, it’s an absolute pleasure.

Gevorg Tamamyan: Thank you. Rana, what is the key of your success?

Rana McKay: You know, I think really enjoying what you do, I think it’s critically important to follow your passion and follow the things that drive you, that excite you, and if you’re doing the things that you love, it becomes second nature to keep doing them, and it’s not a chore or a task, but rather just an extension of who you are.

Gevorg Tamamyan: Why medicine and why oncology?

Rana McKay: Very good question. So I think, you know, in oncology in particular, I find that we all have a personal connection somehow that drives us into the field. I feel oncology is very unique and special in that kind of way, and takes a unique and special individual, I think, that kind of elects to choose this career path.

I think for me, cancer hit very close to home when I was young. You know, my mom was in medicine, she was in nursing, and was diagnosed at an early age with breast cancer when I was still, in high school and had no idea what was going on. You hear the big C word, and it’s just like a bunch of fear and just not knowing what the future holds and what’s going to happen, and I think I was really scared when she was diagnosed and felt somewhat helpless with the, like, my ability to be able to help her when she first was diagnosed.

And she was on, chemotherapy and radiation and had surgery and, you know, wasn’t, you know, didn’t have modern day anti-emetics and just was dealing with all of that, and she got into remission, and then, several years later, she ended up having a recurrence and went through the same thing again.

And, you know, it was really a, just a very influential experience on me that I did not want people to suffer in that kind of way and felt like there was, you know, that we can do better as a field in providing, a comprehensive, like, compassionate care. And it’s actually what drove me into research, too, because we’re not curing everybody with cancer, and we’ve got so much more to do with regards to making people live longer, making patients live better, and because our standard of care is not sufficient across the board, I think that drove me into clinical research.

So, I think those two experiences largely, I think, drove me into oncology, and it’s been a really great experience thus far.

Gevorg Tamamyan: Thank you for sharing, Rana. You are among top doctors in San Diego, recognized as one of America’s best prostate cancer oncologists, selected to be the lead woman oncologist of the year, and you were also among OncoDaily’s 100th of career in this very young age. I mean, how it happened, like, how your education went, and then the career?

Rana McKay: Yeah, so, no, happy to share. So, I grew up in Florida, and actually did my undergrad and medical school training at the University of Florida, and it was actually a wonderful place to train. They were very grounded in medical education, very grounded in compassionate clinical care.

I was in an accelerated program through the University of Florida, which really, I think, allowed me the opportunity to kind of, you know, do well and follow my passion, and following the completion of med school, I did my residency training at Johns Hopkins, which was an absolutely fantastic place to train. The clinical training is top-notch. It’s very much driven by the interns and the residents, and the firm structure at the Hopkins is really formative in kind of building you and teaching people actually how to be a doctor as a number one step, and I think I began to, you know, really get plugged into oncology when I was at Johns Hopkins.

You know, it’s interesting. I thought I was going to do hematologic malignancies and bone marrow transplant, because that was super exciting when you were a resident and training on the services, and I remember I was actually working on a project, and it’s funny how things come full circle. We had seen that a large, there was a increased preponderance of patients that were on the AML leukemia service that had had a history of prostate cancer and breast cancer, and we actually, like my first ASCO abstract was dissecting the clinical characteristics of people who had AML with a prior history of breast and prostate cancer

And it’s funny to come full circle now, because now we’re beginning to understand, oh, there’s like a risk of DNA repair, germline alterations in people with prostate cancer. We didn’t know that back then, and it’s funny how that was actually one of the first projects I worked on with Dr. Judith Karp, who’s now since retired, but was a tremendous kind of mentor when I was at Hopkins, and then from there I did my fellowship training at the Dana-Farber, and I think that’s really where I learned what clinical research was all about.

I had really no idea what it was until I actually was an oncology fellow at the Farber and learning about clinical trials and designing trials, designing therapeutic studies. I work closely with Mary-Ellen Taplin, who continues to be my mentor in prostate cancer, Toni Choueiri, my mentor, colleague, friend, life coach in kidney cancer, and I think a lot of people who I think gave me the opportunity to succeed, who kind of believed in me to give me the, okay, you work on this project, and let’s see if you can execute.

You work on this project, and if you do this one well, we’ll give you another one.
You do this one well, you’ll get it, and so working with Phil Kantoff, who was leading the GU group, Jeff Shapiro, I mean, they were really formative. Rob Mayer in shaping who the researcher that I am today, actually, because I learned how to design trials smartly, and I was really wed to the clinic, and the first step for fellowship, once I got into kind of more specialized training in GU, was I really wanted to learn how to take care of patients with genitourinary malignancies. I wanted to be the expert.

I wanted to learn all the nuances, and, you know, I don’t have a lab, per say. We have a dry lab, if you will, at UC San Diego, but I became, you know, very, very early on, I realized that every single clinical question that I ever had, every research question, all my creative thought came from the clinic. It came from why are patients, you know, why is this population behaving this way?

Why is this drug not working in this group? Why does this pattern of spread happen? I think it’s because of those clinical observations and unmet needs that drove every single scientific question, and so I think that was sort of my upbringing, and I think, like I said at the beginning, like, when you’re doing the things that you love, it’s very evident, and you put your best foot forward.

People see it. They see your passion. It drives you, and I think it just becomes second nature.

Gevorg Tamamyan: You know, my next question was to ask about your mentors, but you ran ahead and answered that question already, so I will ask the other question. Who are your mentees?

Rana McKay: Oh, very good question, and I will say to add to the question of who are your mentors, I think mentorship is important throughout your entire career, and the mentors that you may have as a resident are going to teach you a certain skill set, and as a fellow, it may be different.

As a junior attending, it may be different. As a mid-career person, you may be seeking guidance and mentorship from somebody else that’s going to offer advice on leadership, professionalism, how to bring people together, so there’s going to be people that are going to be mentors and give guidance around different parts, so I don’t believe in this you only have one mentor who’s that’s it.

Like, you can have many mentors, and they’re going to guide you in different kind of ways at different transition points in your career. I think with regards to my mentees, I feel like I’ve gotten a reputation at UCSD that if you want to do research, and you want to do clinical research, and you want to publish and be out there, go talk to McKay, and I feel like I’ve gotten this kind of reputation, and I love it.

Like, I love, you know, undergrads, med students, residents reaching out, junior faculty, and really, like, teaching them how to do research, how to care for patients, and I think, you know, I learn a lot from my mentees.

You know, for me, the clinical question can be anything. Like, we do research across the spectrum from database analyses to lifestyle interventions to therapeutic interventions, IITs, and a lot of the mentees kind of drive some of that creativity, which I think is really awesome. You know, Yue Chen, who’s junior faculty now at UCSD, it’s been amazing mentoring him.
Sharon Choi, one of our fellows who’s going to be recently joining on faculty in a couple of weeks, actually. Justin Shaya, Elizabeth Pan, they’re both attendings. Elizabeth is at UCSF.

She was working with us very closely, and mentorship can happen locally. There’s many people that are local to UCSD, and there’s many people that are afar. You know, one of my mentees who I care for dearly, who’s done such an amazing job, Chinmay Jani, he’s at University of Miami and was formerly in Boston, and we’ve been working together while he’s been across the country, you know.

So, I think mentorship is an investment. You have to invest in people. You have to give them the time, and you need to, you know, relish in their success, you know, and that’s, I think, really important.

Gevorg Tamamyan: Talking about leadership and mentorship, I think first we met at during the LDP program, right?

Rana McKay: Yes.

Gevorg Tamamyan: It was a wonderful program, and now you are, I mean, now you are running for the ASCO nominating committee just after the, I mean, how this LDP program helped this, helped your career, and as well, like, what are your plans for the future?

Rana McKay: Yeah, no, very good question. I mean, the LDP program was absolutely magnificent. You know, we all, it’s a small group where you get to know each other very well, understand operationally how ASCO works, and also understand who you are as a leader.

It’s, it actually provided protected time for us to self-reflect around our leadership strategy and how to be more effective transformative leaders. It certainly allowed me to understand, you know, what’s my style to, you know, as you interact and engage with other leaders across your institution, within your research groups, you know, within other spheres of life, actually understanding, okay, what’s their leadership style, and what’s the most effective way, you know, if I’m this type of person, what’s the most effective way to communicate with somebody that’s this type of person?

You know, we did this disk assessment where we kind of figured out sort of our own leadership styles, and I think it was very eye-opening to understand that and then be able to apply it. There was a lot of self-reflection over, well, what are things that you’re currently encountering in your day-to-day profession?

And the group of, you know, our group of 16, I mean, they were, like, all amazing individuals just doing magnificent things within their institution and within their fields. And actually, we had so much to learn from one another. So, I would definitely encourage, you know, all individuals to, like, at this kind of mid-career stage to give yourself time to sit and self-reflect, because the tools that took that you need to kind of get to this level are different than the tools that are needed to take the next step with regards to leadership.

And so, you know, I think that’s important. It was a fantastic program, and definitely recommend it for many.

Gevorg Tamamyan: Thank you. Thank you very much. Few more questions, and I’m not going to take much of your time.
So, you have a, I mean, you are really very busy in the clinic, in the research, with your leadership roles, but you also have a beautiful family. You are a great mother. I mean, how are you balancing this work and life?

Rana McKay: Oh, very good question. I mean, it takes a village, right? Like, I’ve got an amazing supportive husband.
He is absolutely fantastic. Our, you know, grandparents live nearby. They help.
We have a great community where we live, where the kids go to school. I’ve got four children, and they are the loves of my life. They keep me grounded.

And I think it’s good in this day and age that they see that they are, you know, that you have to work hard for things in life, and it’s a good trait to have. And they see that mom is working and doing things to help others and driving things. I think that’s really important.

And for me, I think it’s been a lot of integration. You know, I integrate my work-life balance. I’m constantly multitasking.
I, you know, my kids and family and work have actually taught me to be incredibly efficient in the things that I do. And, you know, so that’s been really wonderful. So I think it’s a balancing act.

I think the other thing for me is it’s really important to find something outside of work that gives you joy, grounds you, helps you clear your mind. You know, it’s different for many people. For me, I thrive on, you know, making sure to kind of exercise in the morning, clear my mind in the morning before the day starts.

It’s my opportunity to like sit and think, okay, this is reflecting on things from yesterday, planning out the day while I’m kind of doing my workout in the morning. And it really level sets me for the day. And I think that’s been really helpful.
And I think, you know, many people have different kind of passions that drive them, whether it’s music or cooking or hiking or whatever it may be. But for me, that’s what keeps me grounded.

Gevorg Tamamyan: If you describe yourself in one sentence, how you would describe?

Rana McKay: Ah, one sentence. I guess high energy. Passion and high energy.
I don’t know. I feel like that’s me.

Gevorg Tamamyan: And the last question usually we ask, who we should interview next?

Rana McKay: Oh, very good question. Oh, there’s so many people, you know, I. Oh, my God, I don’t even I don’t know who you you have or haven’t interviewed before.

Gevorg Tamamyan: That’s okay. You just can’t name any.

Rana McKay: Well, I’m thinking, you know, Mary-Ellen Taplin, Toni Choueiri those are two. I mean, Mary-Ellen is is fantastic woman leader in the field. She’s gone through so much during her career, but has also done so much in the field of prostate cancer and clinical research.

I think, you know, 20, 30 years ago. The prostate cancer world was largely, you know, male dominant field. And, you know, she was a she was able to really lead the understanding of the androgen receptor and prostate cancer and different ways to therapeutically target that and has been the driver behind changing the paradigm for perioperative therapy for people with localized disease and is just also a great human being.

Gevorg Tamamyan: Thank you. Thank you so much, Rana. Thanks for your time.
I really enjoyed the interview and I’m sure our audience is going to do the same. Thank you very much.