Margaret A. Tempero, MD

Margaret A. Tempero, MD, is the director of the UCSF Pancreas Center and Leader of the UCSF Pancreas Cancer Program. She oversees a full portfolio of projects from risk assessment to early detection, biology, and therapeutics in pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Her personal research career has focused on pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, especially in the area of investigational therapeutics. Dr Tempero was a pioneer in the use of antibody-based therapies and helped develop the fixed dose rate concept for gemcitabine. Her group has developed effective gemcitabine combinations and provided a foundation for using CA19-9 as a surrogate for survival in clinical trials. The group is currently assessing molecular subtypes and molecular enrichment for selecting new drugs for clinical evaluation.

Dr Tempero directed the first Gastrointestinal Specialized Program of Research Excellence (GI SPORE) devoted to pancreatic cancer when she was on the faculty of the University of Nebraska and subsequently led the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-funded U54 Molecular Target Assessment Team at UCSF. She is currently a DreamTeam investigator on a Stand Up To Cancer grant. Dr Tempero is also a co-investigator on a National Institutes of Health U01 grant, which is a collaborative project working with investigators at Kaiser and Stanford to establish early detection cohorts at risk for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. As a thought leader, Dr Tempero organized the first Pancreas Cancer Think Tank in 1999 and co-led the NCI-sponsored Progress Review Group on Pancreatic Cancer in 2000. She has served as the Chair of the NCCN Guidelines^® Panel on Pancreatic Cancer since 2000, and she also serves as co-chair on the Pancreas Task Force Tissue Acquisition Working Group for the NCI intergroup. She co-organized the State of the Science meeting on pancreatic cancer at the NCI. Dr Tempero has extensive experience in scientific review and administration, training, and oversight.