When Ankit Patel, MD, returned to Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center as an attending surgical oncologist in 2025, it was a kind of homecoming.
“I first came to Roswell Park for my fellowship in surgical oncology in the summer of 2020. It was pandemic time so it was an interesting time to move to Buffalo, but the pandemic did not affect my clinical training, as cancer care continued at a robust pace at Roswell Park,” he says.
During his fellowship, while he worked with his mentors John Kane and Joseph Skitski, Dr. Patel says the common mission and sense of purpose shared by doctors and their teams alike was palpable.
“Being at a dedicated cancer center, it’s a pretty unique place to be. You’re focusing on the thing that you’re interested in and when those two things align, your interest and your ability, it’s really nice to be in that environment,” he says.
Dr. Kane was the first person to integrate Cytoreductive Surgery and HIPEC treatment at Roswell Park, something Dr. Patel now specializes in and offers his own patients.
“(They) were the guys who mentored me and (while) I don’t get to work with them, I feel like I carry on their legacy and their work and all they’ve done to bring HIPEC to Roswell Park and the greater Western New York area,” he says. “To be able to carry that on is very meaningful and impactful for me. I feel like I’m a part of a bigger picture and proud to be part of this particular alumni group.”
He also learned from Moshim Kukar, MD, who is now chair of the department. “He’s a very good leader and there’s a lot of support for surgeons and, as doctors, you feel valued. Our leadership (overall), a lot of them are clinically oriented and even the ones that aren’t assign a lot of value to us as physicians and the work we do.”
In his current practice, Dr. Patel specializes in peritoneal surface malignancies in addition to soft tissue malignancies including sarcoma and melanoma.
“I’m providing the type of care and performing the types of surgeries I was trained to do during my fellowship,” he says. “The transition back here has been seamless. It feels a bit like coming home.”
He also has the ability to be at the forefront of new treatments and technologies in his field. “There are continued advancements in the field of peritoneal surface malignancies. These are a difficult group of cancers to treat and there are not often many treatment options. With the use of HIPEC and the current advancements in techniques including minimally invasive approaches and aerosolized chemotherapy, we are hoping to offer options to patients that currently do not have many,” Dr. Patel says.
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One of the benefits of being an alumni from Roswell Park’s surgical oncology fellowship program is the connections made due to its size.
“We take four fellows per year,” he says. “That creates a pretty big alumni group of Roswell Park graduates that are all across the country, sometimes even across the world. Surgical oncology as a field is a small world, but at meetings and conferences, I meet so many Roswell Park alumni that are at different places and institutions. It’s great from a sense of community and collegiality, but it also helps with patient care. If a patient comes to me and wants a second opinion or they live somewhere else and want to be treated closer to home, I can give them someone to call from our program. We’re able to create this community where we can extend our level of patient care to regions outside of this area as well, just based on our alumni.”
