Division of Surgical Oncology

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The MasSpec Pen is a handheld device that enables surgeons to discriminate between tumor and healthy tissues as they operate.

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Division Highlights

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The division brings an array of specialty care to the Texas Medical Center through the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center, the Thyroid and Parathyroid Center and the Elkins Pancreas Center.
In 2020, our Cancer Program ranked 27th in the country in U.S. News and World Report and our GI Surgery Program ranked 21st. Our colon cancer surgery program was also deemed high performing for adult procedures and conditions.
The General Surgery Residency Program is a top program in the United States and provides operative experience with complex surgical oncology from patients with hepatobiliary, pancreatic, colorectal, and other gastrointestinal tumors, as well as breast, sarcoma, melanoma and neuroendocrine malignancies.
Current research efforts include tissue and biomarker studies, development of new diagnostic devices and surgical techniques and clinical trials for pharmaceutics and cancer immunotherapies.
The pancreatic clinical research program has led two NIH-funded investigator-initiated multicenter randomized clinical trials that impacted the use of drains during pancreatectomy, and the consequent development of a multicenter pancreatic surgery outcomes consortium.
The division leads an active, externally funded Surgical Translational Oncology Laboratory supported by a VA Merit Award with a focus on mechanisms of chemotherapy and radiation resistance in pancreatic and colorectal cancer.
Our basic science lab has studied the influence of gastrointestinal hormones on pancreatic cancer growth, the relationship between diabetes and pancreatic cancer and genomic analysis of pancreatic cancer, resulting in hundreds of recent peer-reviewed publications.