Daruka Mahadevan, MD, PhD

Daruka Mahadevan, MD, PhD, is a professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He is the director of the Institute of Drug Development and the associate director for clinical research at Mays Cancer Center, home to UT Health San Antonio MD Anderson Cancer Center. He also is an internationally recognized physician-scientist in hematology and medical oncology.

He received his Bachelor of Science degree in physiology and biochemistry from the University of Reading, England. He went on to the University of London to earn his doctorate in protein crystallography. He received his Bachelor of Medicine, and Bachelor of Surgery (MD equivalent) from King’s College Hospital Medical School at the University of London. He completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Connecticut Health Center, and his hematology-oncology fellowship at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center. Dr. Mahadevan is board-certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine and the American Board of Medical Oncology.

Mahadevan’s major area of interest is early-phase treatments for patients with pancreatic cancer, gastrointestinal stromal tumors, myelodysplastic syndromes and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, including chronic lymphocytic leukemia. He has led or co-led early-phase clinical trials investigating cancer agents first being tested in humans with funding from several National Institutes of Health grants and foundations supporting cancer research. In addition, he has successfully directed a drug discovery laboratory program based on his expertise in protein crystallography. This has led to his being awarded six U.S. patents for new drugs he developed that target novel driver oncogenes (new cancer mutations that initiate or continue cancer).

One of the new drugs he developed, amuvatinib, targeting c-Kit/c-Met/PDGFR/RAD51 has gone through Phase I and II clinical trials. As PI or co-PI on several National Institutes of Health (NIH) and foundation grants, he has established proof-of-concept and delivered on drug discovery - R01 (AKT PH domain inhibitors) and on drug development - NSF (Prostate cancer translational drug development), SPORE in Lymphoma (Aurora kinase inhibitor therapy for aggressive lymphomas) and SWOG Hope Foundation (targeted therapeutics for aggressive B- and T-cell non-Hodgkin Lymphomas).

Lastly, he has participated in monthly scientific leadership committee meetings at UACC, NCI external advisory board (EAB) meeting (Feb 2016, CCSG renewal) and yearly EAB meetings. In addition, he received an NCI P30 supplement (2017-2019) to study rare cancers by whole-exome sequencing of tumor vs. normal in collaboration with the UA Genomics Core. From 2016 to 2019, he was the Director of the Early Phase Therapeutics Program (‘Phase I Program’) and enrolled over 150 patients in novel first-in-human investigational agents in both solid and hematologic malignancies.

He continues to expand the bandwidth of the early-phase therapeutics portfolio and Investigator Initiated Studies.