Physician Profile

Upendra Hegde, M.D.

Dr. Hegde received his medical degree from the Goa Medical College in Goa, India. He completed post graduate training in internal medicine at Goa Medical College (Bombay University) and went on to do a clinical fellowship training in medical oncology at Tata Memorial Hospital in Bombay. He worked closely with basic researchers and studied the clinical relevance of multi-drug resistance in acute myelogenous leukemia. In 1992, he received a research scholarship from Rush Presbyterian St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois, to study leukemia at the cellular and molecular biologic levels, which he completed in 1995 under the mentorship of Harvey D. Priesler, M.D.

Dr. Hegde completed his residency in internal medicine at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, and went on to do a fellowship training program in hematology and oncology in the medicine branch of the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

Appointments

• Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology
• Associate Director, Medical Oncology, Melanoma Program
• Co-director, Head and Neck/Oral Oncology Program

Specialty

• Medical Oncology for Melanoma, Head and Neck Cancers, Lymphoma, Genitourinary Cancer, Hematologic Malignancies, and Leukemia

Certification
Internal Medicine
Medical Oncology
Hematology

Education
Goa Medical College (Bombay University), Goa, India

Hospital Affiliation
John Dempsey Hospital

Research Interests

• Dr. Hegde is particularly interested in understanding tumor biology at the cellular and molecular biologic level. Currently, he is researching the aging immune system and its clinical relevance in older patients with cancer in general, and melanoma in particular.

Interest Statement
Dr. Hegde is committed to the development of new treatment strategies for a variety of cancers targeting molecular pathways and implementing immunology principles. He is particularly interested in the use of monoclonal antibodies and tumor peptides as vaccine. Dr. Hegde is also interested in biological therapies and biochemotherapies for treatment of head and neck cancers.

Languages
Hindi, Konkani, and Marathi