David M. Jablons, M.D., University California San Francisco

David M. Jablons M.D., FACS is the Ada Distinguished Professor in Thoracic Oncology, Chief of General Thoracic Surgery, and Program Leader of Thoracic Oncology at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer. He also is Director of the UCSF Thoracic Oncology Lab.

Dr. Jablons received his medical degree from Albany Medical College of Union University New York. In his fourth year of medical school, he won a prestigious preceptorship at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for clinical science training under Dr. Steven Rosenberg, a world-renowned surgical oncologist and tumor immunologist. This experience kindled his lifelong interest in translational science.

Dr. Jablons began his surgical residency at Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston. He then completed his surgical oncology fellowship at NCI, focusing on tumor immunology and immunotherapy. Dr. Jablons received his advanced cardiothoracic training as a fellow under Dr. Wayne Isom at Cornell Medical Center (now New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center), and at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Medical Center under Dr. Robert Ginsburg. Dr. Jablons also trained with Dr. David Sugarbaker in lung transplantation at Brigham & Women’s Hospital.

In 1994, while on active duty in the U.S. Navy, Dr. Jablons served as a commander and Chief of Thoracic Surgery at the Naval Hospital at Oakland at Oak Knoll. In 1995, he was recruited by the UCSF Department of Surgery to build a world-class program in thoracic surgery and oncology. In 1997, Dr. Jablons was named Chief of General Thoracic Surgery.

Dr. Jablons co-founded the UCSF Thoracic Oncology Conference, the oldest such program of its kind and was co-Chair of the 13th World Conference on Lung Cancer in 2009. He is a member of numerous professional organizations including the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the American College of Chest Physicians, the American Association for Cancer Research and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC). Highly respected by his peers, Dr. Jablons was named to the list of U.S. News “America’s Top Doctors,” a distinction reserved for the top 1% of physicians in the nation for a given specialty.

Dr. Jablons was recently inducted into the American Surgical Society, the nation’s oldest most prestigious surgical organization with membership comprised of world-renowned surgeons from leading academic medical institutions including many Department of Surgery Chairs.

Research Summary

Soon after his arrival, Dr. Jablons recruited basic scientists Biao He, Ph.D., Zhidong Xu, Ph.D., and Liang You, Ph.D. to form the nucleus of the Thoracic Oncology Laboratory. Key areas of research include isolation of lung cancer stems cells, the Wnt pathway in lung cancer and mesothelioma, inflammation in carcinogenesis, and the underlying molecular biology of thoracic malignancies.

The lab recently added four new principal investigators Il-Jin Kim, Ph.D., Hassan Lemjabbar-Alaoui. Ph.D., Carlo C. Maley, Ph.D., and Minh To, Ph.D. creating a formidable research enterprise focused on drug target discovery, commercialization of novel therapeutics and development of genomic assays based on predictive and prognostic biomarkers.