About David C. Rice

Dr. David C. Rice is a Professor in the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. He was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland and received his medical degree from the School of Medicine, Trinity College, the University of Dublin in 1991.

He completed his internship at St James Hospital in Dublin and then went on to obtain his general surgery residency training at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. During this time, he also took 18 months to complete a research fellowship in tumor immunology. He then continued his training in Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at the Baylor College of Medicine and at The UT MD Anderson Cancer Center from 1999-2001. Dr. Rice joined the faculty of the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2001.

Dr. Rice's research is mainly focused on clinical research. He is the surgical principal investigator on the Vanguard study, which examines the use of novel targeted biological agents to prevent cancer recurrence in patients who have undergone surgery for lung cancer. He is also the surgical PI on a prospective randomized trial to evaluate the hemostatic effects of aprotinin during extrapleural pneumonectomy.

He is the institutional PI for an American College of Surgeons Oncology Group clinical protocol (Z0040) and the institutional surgical PI on two other multi-center trials. One of these investigates the significance of circulating tumor cells in patients undergoing lung cancer surgery, and the other is a prospective trial of neoadjuvant chemotherapy, extrapleural pneumonectomy, and adjuvant radiation therapy in patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma. Dr. Rice is a board-certified thoracic and general surgeon and a Fellow of The Royal College of Surgeons Ireland.