Bio
Dr. Dirbas is originally from Brooklyn, NY. He graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. with Departmental Honors in Chemistry in 1981. While in college, Dr. Dirbas worked as a lab tech in Norman Shumway's transplant laboratory during the initial studies of cyclosporin A as an immunosuppressive agent in preclinical studies for heart/lung transplanation. He then completed his M.D. training with A.O.A honors at Columbia University's College of Physician and Surgeons (now the Vagelos School of Medicine). Dr. Dirbas received the Whipple Award as the top surgery student in his medical school class. Internship and residency then followed at Stanford Hospital (now Stanford Health Care). During his professional development years Dr. Dirbas spent two years at the National Institutes of Health during which time he studied immunospression for cardiac transplantion with Dr. Thomas Waldmann by performing heterotopic heart transplants in cynomologous monkeys then treating them with Anti-tac conjugated to Yttrium90. Dr. Dirbas returned to Stanford and in the later years of his residency became more interested in surgical oncology as he finished his chief resident year the completed a 2 year surgical oncology fellowthip with Dr. John Niederhuber who later served as the head of the NCI. After completing his surgical oncology fellowship, Dr. Dirbas worked as a staff surgeon at the Palo Alto VA Hospital and at Stanford for 4 years. During this period, he served as a surgical oncologist and ICU/critical care attending at the Palo Alto VA while also serving as a breast cancer surgeon and trauma surgeon at Stanford Hospital (during which time Stanford achieved recognition as a Level I Trauma Center). In these early years at Stanford Dr. Dirbas routinely contributed tumor tissue to the pioneering work in the Brown/Botstein labs which led to the initial reports of molecular profiling for breast cancer. Dr. Dirbas became an assistant professor in 1999. He initiated and served as PI for Stanford's Phase I/II studies in accelerated, partial breast irradiation, including intraoperative radiotherapy (IORT) making Stanford an early adopter of this technology. From 2010 to 2017 Dr. Dirbas served as the physician leaders of Stanford's Breast Cancer Clinical Care Program: in 2017 an anonymous Medscape poll ranked Stanford in a tie for #7 as the place that Medscape members would most likely recommend for breast cancer care. During this period Dr. Dirbas contributed significantly to the development of Stanford's Women's Cancer Center, Stanford's South Bay Cancer Center, and design elements of Stanford Cancer Hospital. Dr. Dirbas took a partial sabbatical from 2019 to 2021 to devote a portion of his time to renew research programs. He is currently a Co-investigator on Dr. Aaron Newman's NIH R01 grant studying breast cancer stem cells in the triple negative lineage. After created a broad, interdisciplinary team Dr. Dirbas initiated Stanford's research program investigating the merits of FLASH radiotherapy for breast cancer. Dr. Dirbas received a pilot grant from tne Stanford Cancer Institute for this, and more recently received a 2-year grant from tthe California Breast Cancer Research Program. Dr.Dirbas is also the PI on a research agreement between Stanford and Beyond Cancer to develop a Phase II study for use of ultra high concentration gaseous nitric oxide for treatment of solid tumors. Dr. Dirbas also serves in a consulting role with Beyond Cancer as chair of their scientific advisory board. Dr. Dirbas is a board member of the School of Oncoplastic Surgery. Dr. Dirbas continues to maintain an active breast surgery practice at the Stanford Cancer Center/Stanford Hospital/Stanford Health Care with the unique background training in cardiovascular surgery, trauma surgery, ICU/critical care, and surgical oncology,
