Dan Theodorescu

Dan Theodorescu is an American physician and academic. He is the Director of the University of Arizona Cancer Center.

Education Theodorescu earned a medical degree from Queen's University at Kingston in 1986, followed by a doctorate from the University of Toronto in 1991. His post degree training was a residency in urology from the University of Toronto in 1994 and a fellowship in urologic oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 1995. He was the Paul Mellon Chair at the University of Virginia and Paul Bunn Chair and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Theodorescu is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, Association of American Physicians, the American Association of Genitourinary Surgeons, the American Surgical Association, and the National Academy of Medicine. He is an Honorary Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also a founding co-editor in chief of the journal Bladder Cancer.

Research Theodorescu has researched molecular mechanisms driving bladder cancer, discovery of tools that determine drug response and new therapeutics. Examples of his research include examining genes that regulate tumor growth and metastasis such as RhoGDI2 and biomarkers and approaches to precision medicine. He led the work on the “first in class” RalGTPase inhibitor as a new therapeutic in cancer. He has published work showing DDR2 as a target for effective combination immunotherapy with checkpoint inhibitors and the presence of a new cellular subtype in bladder tumors, called “C3”, shown to predict response to immune checkpoint therapy.