Sanjay Kakar, MD

Biography

Dr. Kakar is a Professor of Pathology and Chief of GI-Hepatobiliary Pathology at University of California San Francisco (UCSF). He completed medical school in India and pathology residency at University of Illinois at Chicago followed by fellowships in GI/Hepatobiliary Pathology and Molecular Pathology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. He joined UCSF in 2002, where he has served as the Chief of the GI/Hepatobiliary Pathology and GI/Hepatobiliary Pathology fellowship director since 2015.

He has been the president of both the US Gastrointestinal Pathology Society (2012) and the Hans Popper Hepatopathology Society (2018-2020). He has served on the AJCC 8th and 9th Edition panels for staging of GI and Hepatobiliary cancers, where he was the Vice Chair of the Appendix Panel and the first author of the Pancreas staging chapter. He has served on the CAP Surgical Pathology Committee, CAP Cancer Committee and has been part of the international Committee for Cancer Reporting (ICCR) for colorectal, pancreatic and hepatobiliary cancers. He was also part of the International Autoimmune Hepatitis Group consensus meeting organized by European Society of Pathology that has proposed updated histologic criteria for the diagnosis of autoimmune hepatitis.

His research interests are focused on hepatocellular tumors, staging of GI/hepatobiliary cancers and diagnostic challenges in medical liver disease including autoimmune hepatitis, steatohepatitis and transplant pathology.