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Welcoming New Faculty – M. Reza Afrasiabi, MD

Please join us in welcoming M. Reza Afrasiabi, MD, as a new faculty member in the Department of Surgery.

M. Reza Afrasiabi, MD
Associate Surgeon, Division of Trauma, Burn and Surgical Critical Care

Dr. Afrasiabi graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science in applied mathematics. Prior to medical school, he worked as a fixed-income derivatives research analyst at JP Morgan. He received his medical degree from the Creighton University School of Medicine and completed residency training in general surgery at Saint Joseph Hospital in Chicago. Subsequently, he completed fellowships in surgical critical care and acute care surgery at the Brigham.

Dr. Afrasiabi’s clinical interests include trauma surgery, emergency general surgery and robotic assisted minimally invasive surgery. His research interests include quality improvement and outcomes analysis within the entire realm of surgical critical care and acute care surgery.

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Monica Bertagnolli, MD, Appointed Next Director of the National Cancer Institute by President Biden

Monica Bertagnolli, MD
Group Chair, Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology
Richard E. Wilson Professor of Surgery in the Field of Surgical Oncology, Harvard Medical School

Today, President Joe Biden announced his intent to appoint Dr. Bertagnolli as the 16th – and first woman – director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). See the complete White House announcement here.

Dr. Bertagnolli, a surgical oncologist, clinical researcher and the Richard E. Wilson Professor of Surgery in the Field of Surgical Oncology at Harvard Medical School, has dedicated her career to improving the lives of patients with cancer.

Dr. Bertagnolli specializes in the surgical care of patients with gastrointestinal cancer and sarcoma, collaborating closely with colleagues in Medical Oncology, Radiation Oncology and Pathology to deliver comprehensive, patient-centered care. She is a clinical researcher who has long advocated for increasing diversity in cancer research. Additionally, she has an impressive history of basic science work in the laboratory, where she has focused on understanding the role of the inflammatory response in epithelial tumor formation.

Dr. Bertagnolli’s credentials and tremendous accomplishments throughout her career have prepared her for this key role. These include leading several initiatives within NCI-funded Cancer Cooperative Groups, where she facilitated integration of tumor-specific molecular markers into nationwide cancer treatment protocols, improving the care and outcomes of patients across the country. She has also held numerous leadership roles in multi-institutional cancer clinical research groups, currently serving as the group chair of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, a nationwide NCI-funded clinical trials group. Additionally, she is the CEO of Alliance Foundation Trials, LLC, a not-for-profit corporation that conducts international cancer clinical trials. 

Dr. Bertagnolli graduated from Princeton University and attended medical school at the University of Utah. She trained in surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and was a research fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

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Chandrajit P. Raut, MD, MSc, Awarded a $3.6M National Institutes of Health Grant

Dr. Raut has been awarded a $3.6M NIH grant for the study, “Supratherapeutic Paclitaxel Buttresses Reduce Locoregional Recurrence Rates Following Surgery for Soft Tissue Sarcomas.”

This study will evaluate investigator-designed, biphasic chemotherapy-loaded polymer films to determine if early, but not burst, release of physically entrapped paclitaxel followed by extended release of covalently-bound paclitaxel (1) will reduce locoregional rates and extend survival in patient-derived liposarcoma and leiomyosarcoma xenograft surgical models and (2) safely deliver drug locoregionally, achieving high local tissue drug levels with minimal systemic delivery when implanted in situ. This grant is a successor to a prior R01 by the same investigators.

Chandrajit P. Raut, MD, MSc
Chief, Division of Surgical Oncology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
BWH Distinguished Chair in Surgical Oncology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Director, Center for Sarcoma and Bone Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Raut is a committed clinician who specializes in the multidisciplinary care of patients with soft tissue sarcoma. He is also a prolific researcher and has a multi-PI R01 grant to evaluate an innovative drug-eluting film to be placed in the surgical bed and reduce tumor local recurrence rates. Additionally, he was co-PI on a multi-institutional phase II clinical trial evaluating five years of adjuvant imatinib for primary gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), co-investigator on an international phase III randomized clinical trial evaluating the use of preoperative radiation therapy for retroperitoneal sarcomas and a member of The Cancer Genome Atlas Sarcoma (TCGA-SARC) working group of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Cancer Institute (NCI).

Dr. Raut serves as section editor for sarcoma in the journals Cancer and Annals of Surgical Oncology, associate editor for the journal Sarcoma and editorial board member for the journal ACS Case Reports in Surgery. He has authored over 210 papers and over 30 book chapters.

Dr. Raut is a graduate of Stanford University (BA/BS), University of Oxford (MSc) and Harvard Medical School (MD). He completed a residency in general surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital followed by a fellowship in surgical oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center.