Palo Alto, CA — Dan Gombos M.D., FACS gave a Stanford Ophthalmology Ground Rounds Lecture on eye cancer, drawing from his 25 years of ocular oncology experience as the section head at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston where he focuses on the management of uveal melanoma, retinoblastoma, intraocular and conjunctival malignancies.
Dr. Gombos is a leader in eye cancer clinical trial design and testing new therapies for patients with uveal melanoma. In his lecture, he touched on advancements across cancer and the opportunities for improving eye cancer care.
Dr. Gombos said, “Cancers that I thought were previously incurable are now successfully treated using new technologies, from small molecules to immunotherapies and cell therapeutics. If we work in cross-disciplinary teams, we can find the treatments for metastatic uveal melanoma where we have yet to significantly increase patient survival.”
Dr. Gombos is currently Professor & Chief of the Section of Ophthalmology with joint appointments at the Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas Medical Branch. He is a founding member and Clinical Co-Director of the Retinoblastoma Center of Houston.
Vinit Mahajan M.D., Ph.D., Stanford professor and vice chair for research, said, “Dan’s lecture was inspiring and informative. It’s obvious that his compassion for patients and their families motivates his work. He precisely outlined the scientific problems we need to solve for uveal melanoma.”
“Dan riveted us with a future looking perspective on uveal melanoma,” added Prithvi Mruthyunjaya M.D., MHS, Stanford professor and director of Ocular Oncology at the Byers Eye Institute. “He recognized many of the cutting-edge advancements in the field and emphasized the work being done here at Stanford with liquid biopsy proteomics. He noted that this work may be part of every patient’s evaluation in the future to guide customized therapies.”
Dr. Gombos sees great value in TEMPO, a platform technology developed in the Mahajan Lab that uses liquid biopsies and AI to identify thousands of proteins from only a few drops of eye fluid. Working together Dr. Mruthyunjaya and Dr. Mahajan have shown that this technology can help determine cancer progression, identify new therapeutic targets, and guide drug development. In 2023 at the American Academy of Ophthalmology, Dr. Gombos gave the Zimmerman Lecture: Liquid Biopsy & Personalized Medicine: The Keys that Will Cure Ocular Cancers.
“Multi-omics technologies that allow us to less invasively profile cancer at the molecular level can transform ocular oncology," said Mahajan. “As an expert in the field, Dr. Gombos recognizes the importance of proteomics and encourages testing and validating these new technologies in patients.”
Dr. Gombo’s visit was a homecoming: he attended medical school at Stanford. Later he completed an ophthalmology residency at the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine, Scheie Eye institute, serving as co-chief resident in his final year, followed by two clinical fellowships in ocular oncology; the first as a Heed Fellow at the University of California, San Francisco and subsequently Moorfields Eye & St Bartholomew's Hospitals, London, UK.