Diane Simeone, MD, is director of Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health, where she holds the Koman Family Presidential Director’s Chair and serves as a professor of surgery and pharmacology.
She provides the strategic and intellectual direction for the center’s research programs, administrative structure and multidisciplinary cancer care, and serves as principal investigator for its National Cancer Institute-sponsored Cancer Center Support Grant. An internationally recognized pancreatic surgeon-scientist, Dr. Simeone has built her career around the molecular underpinnings of pancreatic adenocarcinoma, more effective therapeutic approaches and earlier detection.
Her NIH-funded research led to the discovery of pancreatic cancer stem cells, the identification of ATDC as a novel human oncogene and the first definition of distinct populations of cancer-associated fibroblasts in pancreatic malignancies. She has published more than 230 studies in peer-reviewed journals and has spearheaded adaptive clinical trial platforms including Precision Promise and GCAR’s IMPACT PDAC. Dr. Simeone is also founder and leader of the Pancreatic Cancer Early Detection (PRECEDE) Consortium, a global network of participating centers following a longitudinal cohort of more than 10,000 individuals at heritable risk for pancreatic cancer, and she co-chairs the Association of American Cancer Institutes’ Accelerating Clinical Trials Steering Committee.
An elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, Dr. Simeone has served on the NCI Pancreatic Cancer Task Force, the Yale Cancer Center external advisory board, the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center external advisory board at Northwestern University, and the scientific advisory board of the National Cancer Centre Singapore. She also serves on the boards of Biocom California and the Association of American Cancer Institutes.
Dr. Simeone previously chaired the scientific and medical advisory board of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network and is a past president of both the Society of University Surgeons and the American Pancreatic Association. She earned her medical degree at Duke University and completed her general surgery residency at the University of Michigan.