KennethKenjiTanabeMD

Summary

• Dr. Kenneth Tanabe is a Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is the Deputy Clinical Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Director of the MGH Liver Surgery Program. Dr. Tanabe is a member of several of the top national and international organizations for surgery and for oncology. He serves on editorial boards of several top medical journals. His clinical practices focuses on surgical management of patients with liver tumors and patients with melanoma.
  
  Dr. Tanabe directs a research laboratory focused on 1) hepatocellular carcinoma prevention; and 2) experimental gene therapy for liver tumors. His laboratory has been funded by the National Institutes of Health continuously since 1993.
  
  Research in the area of hepatocellular carcinoma focuses on signal transduction pathways involved during malignant transformation of hepatocytes, and molecular mechanisms of cirrhosis progression. Agents that prevent progression of cirrhosis or prevent development of hepatocellular carcinoma in cirrhotic livers are examined in preclinical models before development of clinical trials. The effects on liver are monitored via a gene signature, in collaboration with Yujin Hoshida and Todd Golub at the Broad Institute.
  
  Research in experimental gene therapy for liver tumors focuses on development of replication-conditional viruses that destroy tumors by virtue of replication in the tumor cells, a process that simultaneously produces daughter progeny virion that can infect adjacent tumor cells. Significant progress has been made in alteration of the viral genome to restrict viral replication in normal cells. One virus is now in clinical trial for patients with primary or secondary liver tumors.