Marcia Irene Canto

Marcia Irene Canto, MD, MHS is Professor of Medicine and Oncology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she serves as Director of the Gastroenterology Clinical Trials and Experimental Endoscopy Program and Clinical Director of the Multidisciplinary Pancreatic Cyst Clinic. She is the world's leading authority on early detection and surveillance of pancreatic cancer in high-risk individuals, including patients with familial pancreatic cancer syndromes and those carrying germline mutations that confer elevated PDAC risk. Dr. Canto is the founder and principal investigator of the Cancer of Pancreas Screening (CAPS) program — the largest, longest-running, and most influential prospective multi-center registry for PDAC screening in high-risk individuals. The CAPS studies (CAPS1 through CAPS5, spanning more than 25 years) have enrolled thousands of individuals with familial pancreatic cancer, Peutz-Jeghers syndrome, BRCA1/2, PALB2, ATM, and other high-risk hereditary backgrounds, defining the feasibility, detection rates, surgical pathology findings, and long-term outcomes of endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) and MRI-based surveillance. Her landmark CAPS reports have shown that surveillance can detect PDAC at early resectable stages and precancerous lesions (high-grade PanIN, IPMN with high-grade dysplasia) in this population, and have established surveillance guidelines now used by international medical societies. Beyond surveillance, Dr. Canto is a pioneer in advanced endoscopic techniques for pancreatic lesion characterization, confocal laser endomicroscopy, and novel liquid biopsy and biomarker approaches for PDAC early detection. She has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications.