Leonid Cherkassky, MD

I am a surgical oncologist who specializes in treating patients with gastrointestinal benign and cancerous disease, with a special focus on liver, bile duct, gallbladder, pancreas, and colorectal cancer. My passion is to work with my colleagues to provide multidisciplinary care, combining surgery with other modalities so our patients can become long-term cancer survivors. My personal role is to provide experienced surgical care for our patients, including minimally invasive laparoscopic and robotic approaches for complex pancreatic and liver surgeries to allow faster patient recovery. I also lead our program in surgical implantation of hepatic arterial infusion pumps to treat patients with colorectal liver metastases. I pride myself in providing each patient with the utmost attention to detail and giving care in a speedy, efficient way to ease anxiety and optimize outcomes.

In addition to caring for patients, I conduct laboratory and translational research within the Department of Translational Immuno-Oncology to develop T cell therapies for the treatment of pancreas, liver, bile duct, and colorectal cancers. Even when these cancers are able to be surgically removed, there is often disease that has already spread that can lead to the cancer coming back (‘relapse’). My goal is to combine surgery with immunotherapy to both remove the tumor and treat any disease that has already spread prevent relapse. I focus specifically on developing gene-engineered T cell therapies, a type of immunotherapy where we take T cells and ‘teach’ them to recognize cancer cells. This is done by putting genetic material into T cells (‘gene-engineer’) so they can express a receptor that allows them to attack and kill cancer cells. Since T cells can persist for a long time (form ‘memory’), they have particular promise for treating metastatic cancers, and preventing cancer relapse after surgery. My work has received support from the Department of Defense, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and the American Society for Gene and Cell Therapy.

Lab Members:
Dinesh Dahiya PhD
Saborni Chattopadhyay PhD