Dr. Raffit Hassan is a highly accomplished medical professional with a wealth of education and experience in his field. He is a medical oncologist and senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). He received his medical degree from the University of Kashmir, India in 1988 and completed his internship and residency training in internal medicine at Sisters Hospital, University of Buffalo. He later finished his medical oncology fellowship at the NCI, before joining the medical faculty at the University of Oklahoma in 1998. In 2002, he returned to NCI as a tenure track investigator, and received tenure in 2008.

Dr. Hassan has received several awards for his work, including the ASCO Career Development Award, the NIH Patient Oriented Research Career Development Award and the Pioneer Award from the Mesothelioma Foundation. He has played a crucial role in validating the tumor differentiation antigen mesothelin as a target for cancer therapy and development of mesothelin targeted immunotherapy. This work has laid the foundation for several mesothelin-directed agents that he is evaluating in the clinic for treatment of mesothelioma, lung, and pancreatic cancer.

His clinical trials using an anti-mesothelin immunotoxin have shown major tumor responses in patients with mesothelioma. He is currently directing efforts towards exploiting this approach for the treatment of lung and pancreatic cancer.

Dr. Hassan's areas of expertise include Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy, Mesothelioma, Mesothelin Immunotoxins, Lung Cancer, and Pancreatic Cancer. He can be reached at the Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, Bldg 10; 10 Center Drive room: 4E-5330, Bethesda, MD 20892. His contact number is 240-760-6232 and his email is hassanr@mail.nih.gov.