The UAB Department of Surgery welcomes Vrishketan Sethi, M.B.B.S., to the Division of Surgical Oncology as an instructor.

Sethi is a physician-scientist who will support the Dudeja Lab. He is interested in exploring the myriad of ways microbiota affects host pathology. He completed his MBBS degree from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, and his postdoctoral training at the University of Minnesota and the University of Miami.

During his postdoctoral training, Sethi and his colleagues were among the first groups to report that gut microbes promote pancreatic cancer, melanoma and liver metastasis in mice and that cheap oral antibiotics can be repurposed as potent immunotherapies.

His current experiments use fecal microbiota transplant and germ-free mice to identify the unique cancer-promoting bacterial species, the metabolite they secrete and the diet they thrive on. He is also interested in studying how opioids interact with the microbiota to potentially worsen gastrointestinal cancers.

Sethi’s areas interest include: pancreatic cancer, colorectal cancer, microbiota, melanoma, liver metastasis, pancreatitis and immunotherapy.