Surgical Oncology Research
Reid B. Adams, MD
As associate director of clinical affairs for the Cancer Center, Dr. Adams is responsible for clinical strategic and operational management. He is chief of the division of surgical oncology and the division of hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery.
Kim Bullock, Phd, CCRP
Kim Bullock is Director of the Protocol Development Team for the University of Virginia Cancer Center, Office of Clinical Research and the Human Immune Therapy Center. She specializes in writing and implementing oncology-based, investigator-initiated clinical trials, and provides research support for clinical and research faculty in the Department and the Cancer Center to develop their clinical trial research programs.
Philip W. Smith, MD
Dr. Smith specializes in endocrine surgery, treating benign and malignant diseases of the thyroid, parathyroid, adrenal glands and pancreas. He performs some thyroid and parathyroid procedures using local anesthetic, and he performs some endocrine surgical procedures on an outpatient basis.
Victor M. Zaydfudim, MD
Dr. Zaydfudim’s primary clinical interests include benign and malignant diseases of the liver, pancreas, and bile ducts. His primary research interests include public health initiatives aimed at improvements in healthcare delivery and practice, particularly as it applies to the patients with hepatobiliary and pancreatic disorders.
Zaydfudim Lab
Our research group is interested in improving clinical outcomes and healthcare delivery in patients with gastrointestinal and HPB pathology including both malignant and non-malignant diseases Specific projects focus on improving patient selection, treatment decision-making, access to care, as well as short- and long-term patient specific outcomes.
To address large scale patient decision making and outcome questions we frequently use population level database tools, such as National Inpatient Sample (NIS), National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP), Surveillance of Epidemiology and End Results (SEER), and Virginia Cancer Registry (VCR).
When sufficient data granularity cannot be achieved with variable collected in large population-level datasets, we either use available merged databases, such as SEER-Medicare, or create our own merged datasets by combining NSQIP data with institutional patient populations or combining NSQIP with UVA Cancer Center Registry data. We also employ complex decision analysis methods to address equipoise in comparative effectiveness treatment questions that cannot be sufficiently answered using retrospective cohort or case-control study designs.
Current projects aim to examine long term outcomes in geriatric patients selected for major gastrointestinal and hepato-pancreatobiliary operations with a plan to integrate pre- and post-operative patient related outcomes metrics. In addition, we are studying patient-specific disparities in survival and access to care among populations of GI/HPB cancer patients treated at UVA Cancer Center.
Todd W. Bauer, MD
Dr. Bauer’s clinical focus is in pancreatic and hepatobiliary cancers and soft tissue sarcoma. He leads a laboratory research program in pancreatic cancer. The current focus of his laboratory research is on the interaction between tumor cells and stromal fibroblasts and developing novel approaches to targeting the tumor microenvironment.
Bauer Lab
Our laboratory is a translational research lab focused on pancreatic cancer. We have developed a human pancreatic cancer tissue bank with cancers derived from our patients and have developed several mouse models using our patient-derived xenografts (PDXs). We have exploited these PDX models and a complementary immunocompetent mouse model of pancreatic cancer to investigate the drivers of tumor growth, metastasis and therapy resistance. We have identified novel approaches to therapy focused on inhibiting key signaling pathways and on activation of the innate immune system for the clearance and suppression of micrometastatic disease.
Our approach has been one of ‘team science’ in which we have formed collaborations with numerous labs with complementary expertise in genetics and epigenetics (Adli lab), cancer biology (Ravichandran lab, Gioeli lab), engineering (Kelly lab, Lazzara lab, Swami lab), immunology (Tim Bullock lab), metabolism (Kashatus lab), and others.