His major laboratory focus is on cancers arising in the pancreas and biliary tract, and aligns closely to the clinic in order to understand the high lethality of these cancers, and to explore novel approaches to treatment.

My main goal is the development of new, more effective forms of cancer treatment. This effort involves bridging the divide between basic science, pathology, and clinical oncology, and I consider my wide breadth of knowledge and experience at the interface between clinical medicine and basic science, and my ability to form effective collaborations across a broad range of disciplines, to be my strongest personal attributes. For the past 15 years my main focus has been on pancreatic cancer. My laboratory was one of the first to make use of primary xenografts to study cancer biology and molecular therapeutics. Utilizing my expertise in cellular analysis based on flow cytometry and advanced fluorescence imaging, I have been able to develop sophisticated approaches for studying complex biology in human cancers, and then use this to examine how novel agents are working at the molecular level. I have a particular interest understanding the mechanisms of drug resistance in pancreatic cancers, and in the way responses to tumour microenvironments alter the response to anticancer agents.