Andrew Aguirre, MD, PhD has dedicated his career to becoming a physician-scientist with a focus on cancer biology and translational oncology. He has a longstanding interest in gastrointestinal (GI) malignancies, particularly pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, from originally studying the biology and genetics of pancreatic cancer in graduate school with Dr. Ronald DePinho, to later training in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and in medical oncology at the Dana-Farber/Partners Cancer Care Program.
Dr. Aguirre utilizes functional genetic screens to identify critical signaling pathways in pancreatic cancer, with the goal of finding novel therapeutic approaches to this intractable disease. Additionally, he is an active member of the GI medical oncology division and leads translational research efforts for genomics studies of freshly collected human pancreatic and colon cancer specimens, as well as generation of in vitro and in vivo models of these diseases.
He actively collaborates with the Center for Cancer Precision Medicine and the Shalek Lab to perform single-cell RNA sequencing of neoplastic and non-neoplastic cell types from freshly resected primary tumors and needle biopsies of colon and pancreatic cancer. His training in genomic and functional analysis of human tumors allows him to pursue his longstanding interest in the genetics and biology of GI cancers.