Kiyoshi Saeki, MD PhD
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IRVING MEDICAL CENTER
Dr. Kiyoshi Saeki is a physician-scientist. He received his M.D. from the Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan, in 2009 and his Ph.D. from the Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan, in 2019.
He started studying pancreatic cancer as a graduate student in 2015, where he discovered that concomitant IPMN in PDAC is an independent predictive factor for the development of new PDAC in remnant pancreas. He also investigated ITPN (intraductal tubulopapillary neoplasm) which is also a pancreatic precancerous lesion, and found that recurrence is possible even for a primary noninvasive ITPN. These findings clarified some of the outstanding questions regarding the pathological features of IPMN and ITPN. As a GI surgeon, he recognizes the needs to improve the care and management of patients with IPMN. Hence, he joined Dr. Gloria Su’s lab in 2019 to study the underlying mechanism of how precursor lesions progress to pancreatic cancer using GEMMs (genetically-engineered mouse models) and 3D organoids generated from murine and human IPMN, applying his prior experiences in cancer biology and pathology of pancreatic cancer.
He is grateful to the RLFCRF fellowship for supporting his research in IPMN and PDAC.
