Daruka Mahadevan, MD, PhD is a Professor of Medicine and Director of the Phase I Program and Co-Director of Experimental Therapeutics at the University of Arizona – Arizona Cancer Center. He is a recognized expert and highly experienced Physician-Scientist in Hematology and Oncology. He received his medical degree from the University of London, England, UK. Dr. Mahadevan completed a post-doctoral Fogarty International fellowship at the National Cancer Institute/NIH and was a senior research scientist at Celltech Therapeutics, London, England. He completed an internal medicine residency at University of Connecticut and fellowship training in Hematology/Oncology at the AZCC. He is certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine, subspecialty of Medical Oncology.
Dr. Mahadevan’s major area of clinical interest is in the treatment and management of patients with Pancreatic cancer, Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors (GIST), Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS) and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) including Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL). Dr. Mahadevan's laboratory expertise is to discover novel therapeutic targets by a rigorous validation process and then design drugs to these targets using a structure-based drug discovery algorithm. To this end he has been successful in taking a small molecular inhibitor to c-Kit/PDGFR all the way from the bench to the clinic. MP470 (Amuvatinib), a c-Kit/PDGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor, is now in Phase I clinical trials. He has a demonstrated track record of delivering first-in-human investigational agents for all oncology therapeutics.
In addition, he has successfully directed a structure-based translational drug discovery laboratory program with the award of 6 US patents for new drugs targeting novel driver oncogenes. As PI or Co-PI on several NIH and Foundation grants, he established proof-of-concept and delivered on drug discovery - R01 (AKT PH domain inhibitors) and on drug development - NSF (Prostate cancer translational drug development), SPORE in Lymphoma (Aurora kinase inhibitor therapy for aggressive lymphoma) and SWOG Hope Foundation (targeted therapeutics for aggressive B-cell non-Hodgkin Lymphomas). The CCSG leadership opportunity provided transformational change, utilizing his expertise to create tangible and measurable improvements to enhance research value, build a sustainable New Therapeutics program to optimally deliver patient care and a translational drug discovery platform to dismantle resistance to targeted therapies.