NYU Langone Health Brings on Two Acclaimed Cancer Experts to Lead Ambitious New Gastrointestinal Cancer Center

NEW YORK, Sept. 5, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- NYU Langone Health's Perlmutter Cancer Center announces the arrival of acclaimed cancer leaders Anirban Maitra, MD, and Manuel Hidalgo, MD, as co-directors of a new Gastrointestinal (GI) Cancer Center. This marks a milestone in its mission to develop a world-leading GI cancer program with a tightly integrated research and clinical platform focused on translating research into new treatments for GI cancer patients.

Dr. Maitra is a world-renowned physician–scientist whose work has widely influenced the field of pancreatic cancer research, from early detection and biomarker development to tumor microenvironment and early cancer interception strategies. He is also a leading gastrointestinal and pancreatic pathologist, and at NYU Langone, he will be working with the Department of Pathology to develop programs in spatial biology, molecular diagnostics, and tissue-based analytics. At Perlmutter Cancer Center, Dr. Maitra will serve as both co-director of the GI Cancer Center and associate director of translational research, where he will lead efforts to drive discovery from the lab to the clinic across multiple disease areas.

"We are positioned well at Perlmutter Cancer Center to create a truly world-class GI Cancer Center," said Dr. Maitra. "The integrated nature of this institution gives us so much opportunity to turn what we do at the lab bench into tangible treatments, developing both our understanding of these cancers, and our ability to improve outcomes for our patients."

Dr. Hidalgo is a highly respected translational researcher and clinical oncologist, having done internationally recognized work in anticancer drug development. He has led early clinical development of more than 50 novel agents that have changed the standard of care for patients with advanced cancers. Having pioneered the use of patient-derived xenografts, which use a sample of a patient's tumor to develop the best course of treatment, Dr. Hidalgo's work bridges laboratory discoveries with clinical application. At Perlmutter Cancer Center, he will focus on building robust infrastructure for therapeutic development, investigator-initiated trials, and biomarker-driven studies.

"I am honored to join Perlmutter Cancer Center and help lead the development of this ambitious GI Cancer Center alongside Dr. Maitra," said Dr. Hidalgo. "The vision behind this initiative is to facilitate collaboration between existing expertise at NYU Langone Health to address the needs of our community of patients."

"Dr. Maitra and Dr. Hidalgo have collaborated with each other in the past to develop a successful pancreatic cancer center earlier in their careers," said John P. Leonard, MD, chief of the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and director of the Center for Blood Cancer at Perlmutter Cancer Center. "We are tremendously excited that their reunion at NYU Langone will see them building a GI Cancer Center that partners with our multidisciplinary teams of incredible surgical oncologists, radiation oncologists, medical oncologists, gastroenterologists, and researchers to accelerate scientific discovery into tangible treatments for our patients."

About Dr. Maitra

Dr. Maitra earned his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MD equivalent) at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi and went on to complete an anatomic pathology residency, and clinical and research fellowships in pediatric pathology and molecular pathology, respectively, at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He then completed fellowship training in gastrointestinal pathology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine before joining the Sol Goldman Pancreatic Cancer Research Center at Hopkins as a physician–scientist. Dr. Maitra was a professor of pathology and oncology at Johns Hopkins till 2013, prior to his recruitment to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where he served as professor of pathology and translational molecular pathology and as a distinguished university chair till August 2025.

Dr. Maitra has held many prestigious leadership roles throughout his career, including serving as the inaugural scientific director of the Pancreatic Cancer Research Center at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He has also received numerous honors, such as the R. Lee Clark Prize for Excellence in Translational Cancer Research, the Ruth Leff Siegel Award for Pancreatic Cancer Research, and the AACR Team Science Award. Dr. Maitra has led or co-led multiple large-scale, multi-institutional NIH and foundation-funded initiatives, including consortia focused on KRAS-targeted therapies and early cancer interception.

A prolific researcher, Dr. Maitra has co-authored more than 500 peer-reviewed scientific papers and has given talks at national and international conferences, including at the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Gastroenterological Association, and the European Society for Medical Oncology.

About Dr. Hidalgo

Dr. Hidalgo received his medical degree in medicine and surgery from the University of Navarra, in Pamplona, Spain, alongside a PhD in infectious diseases and cancer at the Autonomous University in Madrid. He completed a residency in medical oncology at University Hospital 12 de Octubre in Madrid and a medical oncology fellowship at UT Health San Antonio.

He has held professorial roles at prestigious institutions, including Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins University, and Weill Cornell Medical College. His teaching and mentorship spans medical students to junior faculty, with a focus on translational oncology and patient-centered care. He has contributed to curriculum design, directed clinical training programs, and served as faculty and director of the ASCO/AACR Methods in Clinical Cancer Research Workshop from 2019 to 2024, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and the development of future physician-scientists.

Dr. Hidalgo is a respected leader in cancer research, having given lectures and talks at numerous conferences, including scientific events at the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting, and others around the world, such as the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress and the European Society of Pathology Annual Meeting. He has co-authored more than 250 peer-reviewed papers in high-impact journals, such as the American Journal of Clinical Oncology, Cell, and Clinical and Translational Oncology.

About NYU Langone Health
NYU Langone Health is a fully integrated health system that consistently achieves the best patient outcomes through a rigorous focus on quality that has resulted in some of the lowest mortality rates in the nation. Vizient, Inc., has ranked NYU Langone No. 1 out of 115 comprehensive academic medical centers across the nation for three years in a row, and U.S. News & World Report recently ranked four of its clinical specialties No. 1 in the nation. NYU Langone offers a comprehensive range of medical services with one high standard of care across seven inpatient locations, its Perlmutter Cancer Center, and more than 320 outpatient locations in the New York area and Florida. With $14.2 billion in revenue this year, the system also includes two tuition-free medical schools, in Manhattan and on Long Island, and a vast research enterprise.

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SOURCE NYU Langone Health System