Assistant Professor of Surgery
Department of Surgery, University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center
Dr. Datta is the DiMare Family Endowed Chair in Immunotherapy and Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and a hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgical oncologist at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. As the Associate Director of Translational Research at the Sylvester Pancreatic Cancer Research Institute, he is also a surgeon-scientist studying myeloid immunobiology in the pancreatic cancer microenvironment. His laboratory focuses on: (1) deciphering and targeting the dominant tolerogenic myeloid cell-derived signaling mechanisms that govern T-cell dysfunction and stromal inflammation; (2) understanding how myeloid lineage diversity and heterogeneity dictate their distinct functional attributes in pancreatic cancer; and (3) developing novel nanoengineering and tissue engineering strategies to abolish tolerogenic signaling in myeloid-derived suppressor cells to mitigate stromal inflammation and invigorate antitumor immune responses in pancreatic cancer. His clinical and translational research interests are in optimizing the physiologic and biologic selection of patients for neoadjuvant therapies in GI cancer, and leveraging the neoadjuvant platform to discover novel predictive biomarkers of therapeutic response and resistance. His work has been funded by the Miami Clinical and Translational Science Institute with an NIH KL2 award, Stanley Glaser Foundation, American College of Surgeons’ Franklin H. Martin Research Fellowship, Association for Academic Surgery Joel J. Roslyn Faculty Award, Society for Surgical Oncology Young Investigator Award, the Elsa U. Pardee Foundation, the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network Career Development Award, and most recently a Department of Defense Idea Development Award.