Ajay Maker

Ajay Maker, MD is a Professor of Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine, where he serves as Chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology. A renowned surgical oncologist, he specializes in complex gastrointestinal and hepatopancreatobiliary diseases, melanomas, and sarcomas, with a focus on pancreatic cancer and liver metastases from colon cancer.

• Education: MD from Yale School of Medicine, residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital/Harvard, postdoctoral work in tumor immunology at NIH/NCI.
• Research: Pioneering immunotherapies for metastatic cancer, developing gene signatures for pancreatic cysts, and creating orthotopic animal models for GI tumors.

His work is funded by NIH R37CA238435, DoD Cancer Impact Award, and other prestigious grants. Recent publications highlight advancements in pancreatic cancer immunotherapy, minimally invasive surgical techniques, and biomarker discovery for intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms (IPMN).

Scientific Honors:

• NIH MERIT Award
• ASCO Merit Award
• Society of Surgical Oncology's Clinical Investigator Award
• NIH K08CA190855 grant
• Over 170 peer-reviewed publications

Dr. Maker actively contributes to medical societies and serves on editorial boards of surgical journals. His clinical expertise aligns with his research in immunotherapy and surgical oncology, and he leads the international IPMN cyst fluid repository.