Steven Artandi, MD, PhD, Named New Director of the Stanford Cancer Institute

Artandi Succeeds Outgoing Director Beverly Mitchell, MD

Steven Artandi, MD, PhD

Photo courtesy of Steve Gladfelter

Artandi will advance the SCI’s tripartite mission of excellence in research, patient care and education.

Steven Artandi, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and of biochemistry at the School of Medicine, has been named the new Laurie Kraus Lacob Director of the Stanford Cancer Institute, effective October 1, 2018.

Artandi replaces Beverly Mitchell, MD, who has served as director for the past 10 years. Mitchell, a professor of medicine, will continue her involvement with the institute as senior adviser, researcher and mentor.

“A strategic thinker and collaborative physician-scientist, Dr. Artandi’s understanding of the opportunities to develop synergies between the elements of our tripartite mission — excellence in research, patient care and education — make him uniquely qualified to further the SCI’s goal of translating Stanford discoveries into individualized cancer care,” said Lloyd Minor, MD, dean of the School of Medicine. “His work is already producing new insights into the origins of cancer, revealing how aspiring cancers circumvent critical bottlenecks encountered during carcinogenesis, and leading to new therapies with the potential to treat many of the most refractory human cancers.”

“I’m very honored to be the next director of the Stanford Cancer Institute, particularly at this exciting juncture in the history of cancer research and cancer therapy,” Artandi said. “We are entering a period during which major translational discoveries will transform our approach to treating cancer patients. Stanford has remarkable strengths in innovation, basic science, clinical medicine and translation. We’re also fortunate to have extraordinary people, including faculty, trainees, nurses and staff. At SCI, we’re uniquely positioned to drive forward the next wave of discoveries to benefit our cancer patients.”

Artandi came to Stanford in 2000 after completing a fellowship in medical oncology at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital. In 2015, he received an Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Cancer Institute. He earned his MD and PhD in microbiology in 1995 from Columbia University.

“Dr. Artandi is a highly accomplished physician-scientist who will take the Stanford Cancer Institute to the next level,” said Mary Hawn, MD, professor and chair of surgery at Stanford. “He has innovative plans to translate science to patients that will markedly
impact care.” Hawn and Thomas Montine, MD, PhD, professor and chair of pathology, co-chaired the search committee for the new director.

“We are delighted to have Dr. Artandi as the next director for the Stanford Cancer Institute,” Montine said. “His leadership will undoubtedly help the institute continue to improve outcomes for patients facing cancer diagnosis and treatment.”

Artandi Conducts Novel Research on the Role of Telomerase

Artandi, who holds the Jerome and Daisy Low Gilbert Professorship, is a medical oncologist and cancer biologist whose research focuses on the role played by the enzyme telomerase in cancer, aging and stem cell biology. Artandi and his colleagues recently found that liver stem cells that express high levels of telomerase act in mice to regenerate the organ during normal cellular turnover or tissue damage, according to a study published online in Nature in April 2018. Artandi was the senior author of the study and
postdoctoral scholar Shengda Lin, PhD, was the lead author.


Understanding the liver’s remarkable capacity for repair and regeneration is a key step in understanding what happens when the organ ceases to function properly, such as in cases of cirrhosis or liver cancer.


“The liver is a very important source of human disease,” said Artandi. “It’s critical to understand the cellular mechanism by which the liver renews itself. We’ve found that these rare, proliferating cells are spread throughout the organ, and that they are necessary to enable the liver to replace damaged cells. We believe that it is also likely that these cells could give rise to liver cancers when their regulation goes awry.”

Lin and Artandi wondered whether they could use telomerase expression as a marker to identify the subset of cells responsible for regenerating the liver during normal turnover. These cells, they believe, could also serve as the cell of origin for liver cancer.


“These rare cells can be activated to divide and form clones throughout the liver,” said Artandi. “As mature hepatocytes die off, these clones replace the liver mass. But they are working in place; they are not being recruited away to other places in the liver. This may
explain how the liver can quickly repair damage regardless of where it occurs in the organ.”

“You could imagine developing drugs that protect these telomerase expressing cells, or ways to use cell therapy approaches to renew livers,” said Artandi.


In addition to his work on liver cells, Artandi’s current research efforts are aimed at understanding the role of pancreatic cancer acinar cells and how they impact the earliest stages of pancreatic cancer development.