Speakers

  Thursday, March 17th; 11:50AM – 12:35 PM
The Colorectal Cancer Epidemic: Root Causes & Remedies

About the Speaker
Richard M Goldberg, MD, is now working as a consultant through his company Oncology Developments LLC after a long career in academic medicine. He retired from his academic appointments in December of 2019. Now he is engaging with both start-up and well-established pharmaceutical companies on drug development in gastrointestinal cancers, as an expert witness in patent law disputes, and by serving on data safety monitoring boards. He remains the editor for GI cancers for UpToDate, the online medical textbook that has become the preferred reference for physicians. He continues to serve as the Associate Group Chair for the NCI funded oncology cooperative group the Alliance. He provides assessment and advice to academic cancer centers regarding their cancer programs. Recent engagements have taken him to the Medical University of South Carolina and the University of Tennessee. He is the chair of the Lower GI Committee of the American Joint Commission on Cancer that is revising the AJCC Staging Manual for the 9^th edition. He also continues to mentor GI oncologists locally, around the country, and across the world giving early, midcareer, and senior academic physicians research and career advice. He remains active on grant review and other committees for the American Society of Clinical Oncology and as an ad hoc reviewer for the Department of Defense cancer program.

In 2019 he transitioned to the role of emeritus Director of the West Virginia University Cancer Institute’s (WVUCI), and the WVU Cancer Signature Program. As the WVUCI director he served as a member of WVU health sciences Vice President and Executive Dean, Clay Marsh’s leadership team.  He oversaw the clinical, research, and teaching missions of the cancer institute and its component organizations that include satellite clinical and clinical research locations that are dispersed throughout West Virginia.

Considered an international leader in gastrointestinal cancer treatment and research as well as in leadership of cancer programs in academic medicine, Dr. Goldberg has been principal investigator, co-PI, co-investigator and mentor on multiple research and training grants funded through the National Cancer Institute (NCI). He has published more than 380 papers in peer-reviewed journals. He is a sought after as a lecturer at academic centers and scientific conferences across the nation and the world. His clinical interests are in management of patients with malignancies originating in the gastrointestinal tract, particularly colorectal and neuroendocrine cancers. He led the phase III trial that provided the data that led to the Food and Drug Administration’s licensing of oxaliplatin as indicated for the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer in collaboration with collaborators from Sanofi. The FOLFOX regimen remains the standard of care in that setting 20 years later. His research focuses on defining new treatments, elucidating inherited cancer susceptibility, and identification of predictive and prognostic factors in GI cancers.

Dr. Goldberg is a graduate of Harvard University, earning an undergraduate degree cum laude in biology in 1975 and received his medical degree from the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in 1979 where he was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha honor medical society. He completed his residency at Emory University and his medical oncology fellowship at Georgetown University.

Prior to his arrival at WVU in 2017, he served as physician-in-chief of the both the James Cancer Hospital at The Ohio State University (OSU) and, prior to that of the North Carolina Cancer Hospital, at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill (UNC). As physician-in-chief of both organizations he was responsible for the design, occupation, and operations of both the UNC and the OSU cancer hospitals. He served as the Associate Director at both the OSU and the UNC Comprehensive Cancer Centers and the Division Chief of Hematology and Oncology at UNC and Acting Division Director of Medical Oncology at OSU. Prior to that he was a faculty member at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester and Associate Chair of the Department of Medicine at the Geisinger Clinic in Danville, PA.

Dr. Goldberg serves on several national scientific advisory committees and on the scientific advisory committee for a number of pharmaceutical companies at the corporate level. He is a member of the board of directors of Fight Colorectal Cancer, a patient advocacy organization. He has been honored as a Fellow in the American College of Physicians and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. He is married to Lynda Goldberg MBA, MPH and has two adult children.