Othon Iliopoulos, MD, directs the Mass General Cancer Center’s Familial Renal Cancer Clinic and its Center for Von Hippel Lindau Disease, a genetic predisposition to kidney cancer and other tumors. A member of the faculty of the Center for Cancer Research and an assistant professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Iliopoulos studies the mechanism by which tumors adjust to low oxygen environments and draw nourishment from abnormal blood vessels.
Renal cancer eludes early diagnosis, and as a result, it is often detected at an advanced stage. Currently, the most effective treatment consists of surgical removal of the tumor. Dr. Iliopoulos has devised novel approaches to suppress the tumor’s oxygen-sensing switch, findings with the potential to yield new strategies for renal cancer therapy.
Dr. Iliopoulos received his medical degree from the University of Athens in Greece and trained at the University of Wisconsin and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
