David H. Ilson

David H. Ilson, MD, PhD is Attending Physician on the Gastrointestinal Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. He is one of the foremost authorities on esophageal cancer in North America, with extensive expertise spanning squamous cell carcinoma, adenocarcinoma, and gastroesophageal junction cancers across localized and metastatic settings. Dr. Ilson has designed and led more than 30 phase I and II trials in esophageal and gastric cancer at MSK, evaluating chemotherapy combinations, HER2-directed agents, VEGFR2 inhibitors, and combination chemoradiation strategies. He contributed to defining the role of definitive chemoradiotherapy as a curative approach in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and has been instrumental in establishing the evidence base for preoperative chemoradiation in esophageal adenocarcinoma. Dr. Ilson has also extensively evaluated HER2-targeted therapies in esophageal cancer, including conducting early studies of trastuzumab-based combinations and second-generation HER2-directed agents. He is a co-author of the NCCN Esophageal and Gastric Cancer Clinical Practice Guidelines and has published over 400 peer-reviewed articles. Dr. Ilson is widely sought as an educator and has been an invited lecturer at ASCO, ESMO, and WCGIC for over two decades.