Dr. Manish A. Shah will lead the new Gastrointestinal Oncology Program.
A reception was held Oct. 18 to celebrate the opening of a newly renovated suite for the treatment of gastrointestinal cancers. Located on Floor 12 of the Weill Greenberg Center, 1305 York Ave., the facilities represent state-of-the-art patient care at its best. Individual treatment bays are equipped with flat-screen TVs and provide sweeping views of York Avenue. Dr. David Nanus, co-chief of the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell, said, "We wanted to ensure that this newly renovated facility, and especially the infusion bays, would be a comforting and reassuring place for our patients throughout their treatment."
Following a national search, Dr. Manish A. Shah, a nationally recognized clinician-investigator, was recruited from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center to serve as director of the new Gastrointestinal Oncology Program. "We knew we had the best in Dr. Joseph T. Ruggiero as medical director of the Division's Solid Tumor Oncology Practice, so our clinical piece was always set," said Dr. Nanus. "But we had not yet found the research piece to the puzzle."
Chemotherapy infusion bays were designed to provide as much comfort as possible to patients while they receive treatment.
Dr. Shah is collaborating on a multidisciplinary basis with other divisions and departments within NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell in an effort to maximize the best treatment approaches for patients with gastrointestinal malignancies. Gastrointestinal cancers, as a group, are the most common in the United States and the world and include colon, esophagus, gastric, pancreas and liver. Combined, they are double the rate of lung, breast and prostate cancers.
"We are at the tip of the iceberg," said Dr. Shah. "We're entering a new era of personalized medicine, where individuals will have very specific mutations identified, which may direct our treatment approach for a particular individual. Understanding the epidemiology and biology of GI cancers will allow us to design how aggressive we can be with treatment. We can weigh chemotherapy versus surgery and be able to tailor treatment for an individual patient. It will be much more than drugs, involving an individual treatment algorithm. This is where the future of GI is going."
Dr. Nanus welcomed faculty, colleagues, friends and family and thanked all of the staff who participated in bringing the project to fruition. Dr. Andrew I. Schafer, chairman of the Department of Medicine, said, "This new suite offers the highest level of technology and comfort combined in one location, for a new and more personalized era in the treatment of gastrointestinal cancers."