Jay M. Lee, MD

Jay M. Lee, MD, is the Surgical Director of the Thoracic Oncology Program, and Associate Professor of Surgery (Tenure Track) at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

He received his medical degree from UCLA and training in General Surgery at Georgetown and Duke University Medical Centers.  He completed a Thoracic Research Fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and received Thoracic Surgery training at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital Boston at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Lee is on the Steering Committee of several neoadjuvant, adjuvant, or perioperative immunotherapy or targeted therapy trials in resectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) including LCMC3 (atezolizumab), CANOPY-N (canakinumab and/or pembrolizumab), NAUTIKA1 (alectinib, entrectinib, vemurafenib plus cobimetinib, pralsetinib, or stereotactic body radiation therapy plus atezolizumab), GEOMETRY-N (capmatinib), HORIZON-2 (alectinib; divarasib), SUNRAY-2 (olomorasib), and Beamion LUNG 3 (zongertinib).  He is on the Scientific Advisory Committee for several Phase 3 trials: TroFuse-019 (peri-adjuvant MK2870, TROP2-ADC), Peri-adjuvant V940-009 (individualized neoantigen mRNA vaccine), and INTerpath-002 (adjuvant V940) with pembrolizumab.

Dr. Lee has published extensively in the field of thoracic oncology and has a funded research laboratory.  His scientific effort has focused on translational trials involving investigator-initiated immunotherapy in human lung cancer and modulation of the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment.  He is the Principal Investigator of the “Combined Gene modified dendritic cell therapy and PD-1 inhibition for lung cancer” trial, which is patented at UCLA and holds the FDA IND as sponsor for the vaccine.

Dr. Lee is Board-certified by the American Board of Surgery (ABS) and the American Board of Thoracic Surgery (ABTS). He is a member of many professional organizations, and serves on leadership committees for the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS), American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC).  Dr. Lee serves on several editorial boards of prestigious journals.