About me

Dr. Jack A. Roth earned his medical degree at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1971, and then completed postgraduate training in thoracic surgery and research at the UCLA School of Medicine. He was a senior investigator and head of the Thoracic Oncology Section in the National Cancer Institute’s Surgery Branch before joining the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center(UTMDACC) in 1986 as professor and chair of the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. He serves as founding director of the W. M. Keck Center for Innovative Cancer Therapies and holds academic appointments in UTMDACC’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Oncology and the Department of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston. While at the NCI, Dr. Roth completed the first randomized clinical trials of neoadjuvant chemotherapy for squamous carcinoma of the esophagus and open lung biopsy in immunocompromised patients with diffuse pulmonary infiltrates. At UTMDACC, Dr. Roth has initiated and acted as the principal investigator of the first gene therapy trials for lung cancer. Dr. Roth has spearheaded the development of institutional multidisciplinary protocols in thoracic oncology and was the principal investigator of the first randomized trial showing survival benefit with neoadjuvant chemotherapy in stage IIIA resectable lung cancer.