Pancreas, Liver, and Gastrointestinal Surgery

By connecting what we learn in our biomedical research labs with our patients’ medical needs, we can translate the latest knowledge into new hope for pancreatic cancer and other serious conditions.

Serving as a high-volume referral center and backed by the expertise and the resources of a world-class academic medical center, our pancreas, liver, and gastrointestinal programs offer access to new treatments, including clinical trials, and advanced surgical procedures not available at all institutions.

One of our greatest clinical strengths is our multidisciplinary approach, coordinating each patient’s care through a team of providers in medical oncology, radiation oncology, radiology, pathology, gastroenterology, cancer genetics, and social work. This approach allows us to support patients from evaluation through treatment to recovery, providing a true home for each person’s health care needs.

Our multidisciplinary programs and clinical specialties include:

• A Multidisciplinary Pancreatic Cancer Clinic, which sees more than 600 patients each year, and offers treatments including Whipple operations and distal pancreatectomies.
• A Multidisciplinary Liver Tumor Clinic, which evaluates and treats patients with tumors involving the liver and biliary system, leveraging a team of hepatologists, transplant surgeons, medical oncologists, and radiologists.
• A Multidisciplinary Colorectal Cancer Clinic, which offers a range of tailored treatments for colon and rectal cancer, including radiation therapy, open surgery, and laparoscopic surgery.

• Pancreatic tumors and cysts
• Liver and bile duct tumors
• Gallbladder disease
• Complex biliary reconstruction
• Stomach cancer
• Intestinal cancer
• Colon and rectal cancer

We support the academic development and clinical training of residents across the surgical specialties, with many trainees who’ve studied with us going on to fellowships in hepatopancreatobiliary and gastrointestinal surgery. Our faculty members lead research labs across different areas of focus, including cancer and tumor biology, obesity and metabolic disease, health outcomes and policy, which offer opportunities for trainees to gain research experience as they train to become surgeon scientists.

We seek new avenues for investigating and treating cancer, using large datasets and personalized medicine to better inform our understanding of what’s possible. Our hepatopancreatobiliary research program spans basic lab research to health services, with a major emphasis on cancer immunotherapy.

Current research interests include:

• Studying the different mechanisms by which pancreatic cancer grows in order to develop new treatment options. We’re able to take pancreatic cancer samples from patients to grow in our lab, creating opportunities to test individualized approaches that treat that specific cancer.
• Identifying biomarkers and novel targets for treating pancreatic cancer and metastatic colon cancer in the liver. This effort fuels the development of clinical trials focused on identifying better therapies for these diseases.
• Using and sharing data on clinical cases and specific cancers through a multi-institutional research collaborative that allows us to answer scientific questions backed by more data so we can better understand the mechanisms for cancers of the stomach, liver, and pancreas.
• Developing and testing new ways to use the immune system to recognize and reject pancreatic and liver cancers.