Michael J. Cavnar, MD

Biography

Dr. Cavnar earned his medical degree from the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. Afterward, he completed five years of a general surgery residency at New York University School of Medicine. He then completed a two-year fellowship in complex general surgical oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City, the same institution where he spent the previous three years completing laboratory research under the guidance of Dr. Ronald DeMatteo through the Surgical Oncology Research Training Program. After the conclusion of his training, Dr. Cavnar was recruited to University of Kentucky College of Medicine to join the Division of Surgical Oncology at the Markey Cancer Center in 2017. Cavnar’s clinical interests include treating cancers of the liver, biliary tract, pancreas, stomach and small intestine, as well as abdominal sarcomas such as gastrointestinal stromal tumor. His current research focuses on clinical application of hepatic artery infusion (HAI) pump therapy for cancers of the liver, translational research on progression factors in gastrointestinal stromal tumor, and evaluation of biomarkers for detection of recurrence in pancreatic cancer. In 2020, Dr. Cavnar initiated a program of HAI chemotherapy at the University of Kentucky as a part of a clinical trial, becoming the only HAI program in the state at the time. This treatment is used for colorectal cancer metastases to the liver, as well as intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma. He is actively involved in the HAI Consortium Research Network (HCRN), a collaboration of over 100 worldwide institutions studying HAI. Cavnar is member of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, and is the site principal investigator for multiple cooperative group trials at the University of Kentucky. He is the Principal Investigator at UK for the Total Cancer Care protocol through the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN), a multi-institution longitudinal cancer genomics protocol, on which Markey Cancer Center has enrolled over 10,000 patients.