Dr. Lorenzo Ferri is the David S. Mulder Chair in Surgery, a clinical scientist in the Departments of Surgery and Oncology specializing in the management of complex malignancies of the foregut, and heads the McGill University Program in Upper GI Cancer. Through this, he has spearheaded numerous initiatives designed to improve outcomes in gastric and esophageal surgery through carefully coordinated basic, translational, and clinical scientific research, and patient care. He established the McGill University Foregut Malignancy Research Group, a multidisciplinary collection of researchers and clinicians with the objective of identifying and executing research ideas in the field of gastric and esophageal cancer.

Dr. Ferri is an independent investigator with active basic science, translational and clinical research programs, all concentrated primarily on malignancies of the chest and foregut. Dr. Ferri has initiated numerous clinical programs and studies for esophageal cancer including: Novel combination chemotherapy regimens for neoadjuvant treatment of adenocarcinoma; Optimizing the palliation of metastatic disease; and extensive work into the investigation and optimization of outcomes after esophageal surgery. He is the first physician in Canada to introduce a novel technique of removing early cancers of the esophagus and stomach through endoscopic means (Endoscopic Submucosal Dissection), and has been invited throughout North America to speak on this method.

This clinical work is closely coupled to both translational and fundamental research in the area of cancer-inflammation cross talk. Dr. Ferri is the recipient of numerous peer review grants (including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Canadian Cancer Society) for his work into the inflammatory basis of cancer metastasis. He has identified the important role of bacterial antigens and host neutrophils in propagating cancer dissemination, thus representing a new paradigm in the metastatic process. One of his most recent discoveries highlighting the novel finding implicating Neutrophil Extracellular Traps in the metastatic process (Journal of Clinical Investigation – August 2013) was widely reported in the global lay media including National Public Radio, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and Radio Canada.