Pecora interned at
New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center from 1983 to 1984 and was a resident in internal medicine from 1984 to 1986. Pecora later created the John Theurer Cancer Center's and served as chairman, chief innovations officer, and vice president. His distinctions include he ASCO Cancer Foundation Research Award, BioNJ Dr. Sol J. Barer Award for vision, innovation and leadership, and the Gallo Award for outstanding cancer research.
Research and grants Between 1992 and 2005, Pecora was Principal Investigator on more than 40 studies and trials. In 1998, he started a version of the
problem-based learning program at
UMDNJ. This was an adaptation of earlier programs that allows medical students to fulfill their early basic science course requirements by examining the actual case studies. Pecora et al. discovered that patients who had received more than two cycles of
chemotherapy and were shown to have "chemotherapy-resistant NHL mobilized a significantly lower percentage of CD34+CD33− cells than did chemotherapy-sensitive NHL patients." They also found the reverse that those who had received less significant levels of chemotherapy treatment had higher levels of CD34+CD33− cells. In the
phase 1 clinical trial, they found that intravenous administration of the
oncolytic viruses led to inflammation of the tumor site that made it difficult to immediately determine effectiveness of the treatment. This false appearance of increase in cancer cells was confirmed by a later trial of the same oncolytic virus, and also in Onyx 015, an
oncolytic adenovirus. In describing the report authored by Pecora, Emily Bergsland and
Alan Venook editorialized that The study concludes that PV701 could be tested relatively safely and offers dosing guidelines to mitigate side effects. However, the study raised more questions, moving "the field forward, even if very slowly." In 1995, HUMC participated in a clinical study sponsored by
National Cancer Institute that focused on the use of bone marrow transplantation to treat women with advanced
breast cancer. Pecora expressed his misgivings about only offering the procedure as part of the study, as there was a chance the patients would be chosen aspart of the
control group. He instead offered direct access to the popular new procedure as an alternative to participation in the trial, allowing the patients to choose. The procedure was later proven ineffective. In 1998, Pecora started a version of the
problem-based learning program at
UMDNJ. This was an adaptation of earlier programs that allows medical students to fulfill their early basic science course requirements by examining the actual case studies. In 2009,
The Record named Pecora among Hackensack's administration members with conflicts of interest, as they had ownership interests in companies with business dealings with the hospital. In 2011, Pecora founded Cota Healthcare, a company to develop a classification system based on patient's "gender, age, family history, type and stage of disease, and treatments." == Notable publications ==