Alec Kimmelman, MD, PhD

As director of the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone Health, I am committed to leading the charge for new treatments and providing world-class care to our patients. I specialize in gastrointestinal cancers, including pancreatic cancer, esophageal cancer, stomach cancer, rectal cancer, and anal cancer. I also lead the Department of Radiation Oncology, which uses the latest and most advanced technologies to treat people who have these types of cancer.

My work delves deeply into cancer research. I have published more than 50 articles. For more than 15 years, I have studied the biology of cancer and I am a National Institutes of Health–funded investigator.

My lab work focuses on understanding the biology of pancreatic cancer. In particular, we focus on the unique metabolism of these cancers to understand how they use various fuel sources to power their growth. By targeting the way pancreatic cancers use fuel and create building blocks for growth, we hope to be able to develop novel therapeutic approaches. My research is paving the way for multiple clinical trials that will involve the testing of these new therapies.

I serve on the editorial boards of several leading scientific journals, and my own research has been published in some of these journals. These include Cancer Cell, Cancer Discovery, Cell, Genes & Development, Nature, and Science. I’ve received numerous honors and awards, including election to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Ruth Leff Siegel Award for Excellence in Pancreatic Cancer Research from Columbia University’s Department of Surgery. This award is given to the researcher who has made the most significant contribution to pancreatic cancer research.