Meet the 2021-2022 Surgery Fellow – Daniel C. Thomas, MD, MPH,

This year, Daniel C. Thomas, MD, MPH, was named the Kristen Ann Carr Fund Surgery Fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) for 2021-22. A lifelong resident of New York State, Dr. Thomas was born and raised in Rochester and attended college at SUNY Cortland. He received his medical degree from the SUNY Upstate College of Medicine, where he was honored with the John B. Henry, M.D., Endowed Scholarship for Biomedical Research. He then went on to complete his general surgery residency at Yale University, where he also completed a research fellowship in thoracic oncology, before moving to New York City for a surgical oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. As a second-year surgical oncology fellow, Dr. Thomas has two areas of research interest: the care of geriatric patients with sarcoma, as well as the development of a clinical trial aimed at treating patients with soft tissue sarcomas with a drug that can be injected directly into the tumor.

The proportion of elderly people in the United States is expected to grow significantly in the coming decades, and this will likely lead to an increase in the number of elderly patients being diagnosed with sarcoma. Under the guidance of Dr. Murray Brennan and Dr. Armin Shahrokni, an expert in Geriatric Oncology, Dr. Thomas is studying the impact of elderly patient frailty on the outcomes and quality of life for those who undergo surgery for retroperitoneal sarcomas. additionally, he is helping to develop a clinical trial to treat patients with sarcoma of the extremities with an injectable drug that can reduce the size of the tumor or possibly cause it to completely disappear. His mentor for this sarcoma clinical trial is Dr. Edmund Bartlett, who was the 2018 Kristen Ann Carr Fund Surgery Fellow.