Raymond Bergan, MD
Kavita and Lalit Bahl Endowed Cancer Center Director
Stony Brook Cancer Center
Raymond Bergan, MD, has built his career around a question with direct consequences
for cancer patients: How can researchers stop cancer cells from moving, becoming invasive
and forming lethal metastases? Trained as a medical oncologist and basic researcher
in molecular pharmacology and drug discovery at the National Cancer Institute, he
has spent decades studying the molecular pathways that drive cancer cell motility
and developing therapeutic approaches to target them. In fact, his group was the first
to target pro-migration pathways in humans. They also developed a first-in-class inhibitor
of cancer cell migration and metastasis.
Bergan’s work spans laboratory science, clinical research and program building. He
founded and directed Northwestern University’s National Cancer Institute-funded early-phase
cancer prevention program, expanding it into a 19-institution, $23 million operation
spanning two countries. As chair of the ECOG-ACRIN Prevention Committee, he helped
secure approval for a new National Cancer Institute trial and led work that reduced
30-day mortality from acute promyelocytic leukemia from 30 percent to 3 percent through
a community-based tertiary prevention strategy.
Before joining Stony Brook University in 2025 as director of the Stony Brook Cancer
Center, Bergan served as deputy director of the Buffett Cancer Center at the University
of Nebraska Medical Center and held leadership roles at Oregon Health & Science University
and Northwestern. His work has also included extensive mentoring, including advising
or serving on committees for dozens of doctoral and MD/PhD students, and supervising
more than 60 laboratory members. His honors include a 2019 Teacher of the Year award
from hematology/oncology fellows at Oregon Health & Science University. His biographical
sketch notes that he has held three endowed chairs since 2015, with Lalit and Kavita
Bahl identified as the most recent.
