Maheswari Senthil

Dr. Senthil is a surgeon-scientist, Chief of Surgical oncology and Director of Peritoneal Malignancy program at University of California- Irvine . She is also the medical director of UCI-Center for Clinical Research , Vice Chair of research in the Department of Surgery, and inagural John Wayne cancer foundation endowed chair.

The overarching goal of her work is to improve the outcomes of patients with peritoneal malignancies through innovative diagnostic and treatment approaches. She is funded by NCI with a R01 grant to develop an in-vitro, 3-D vascularized microtumor model of peritoneal carcinomatosis to assess treatment response of peritoneal metastases. She is also developing a liquid biopsy utilizing exosomal biomarkers in patients with gastrointestinal cancers. Dr. Senthil is the principal investigator of STOPGAP-I a phase II clinical trial that is evaluating the strategy of bidirectional chemotherapy to treat patients with gastric peritoneal carcinomatosis. With the success of this single-institution trial she has obtained approval from NCI to launch a national multi-center phase II/III randomized clinical trial that will compare systemic therapy in patients with gastric carcinomatosis.