My clinical interest is gastrointestinal (GI) malignancies with a focus on colorectal cancer and my laboratory focuses on the use of genomic based technologies to identify and develop novel therapeutic targets for the treatment of GI cancers.

Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer in the world with approximately 150,000 new cases in the United States each year. At initial diagnosis, 25% of patients will have advanced or metastatic disease. Currently, the use of chemotherapy in this setting can palliate symptoms and improve survival but cannot cure patients, and metastatic colorectal cancer still remains a debilitative and incurable disease and new therapeutic approaches are required to improve our treatment of this disease. Dr. Hsu's research focuses on the application of high-throughput technologies including microarrays to match the individual patient with the most optimal therapy to improve clinical outcomes in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.

Active efforts in the laboratory and clinic include:

1. Development of high throughput genomic and proteomic technologies to develop new prognostic and predictive biomarkers in colorectal cancer and other gastrointestinal malignancies;
2. Development of a preclinical in vivo murine model to study new and novel therapeutic combinations; and
3. Integrating genomic technologies with clinical trials to identify patients with colorectal cancer and other gastrointestinal malignancies who are most likely to respond to therapy.

David Hsu serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine. Dr. Hsu received his M.D., Ph.D. degree at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He completed an Internal Medicine Residency at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas and a Hematology/Oncology fellowship at Duke University. After his fellowship in Hematology/Oncology, he worked in the laboratory of Dr. Phil Febbo where he used genomic strategies to study the biology and mechanism of metastatic adenocarcinoma and in particular colorectal cancer. His research now focuses on developing genomic strategies to improve prognosis and treatment of colorectal and other gastrointestinal malignancies.