Dr. Demetri received his A.B. in biochemical sciences from Harvard College and M.D. from Stanford University, then pursued internal medicine residency and Chief Residency at the University of Washington, Seattle and medical oncology fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. As a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, he co-directs the Ludwig Center at Harvard (with Joan Brugge, PhD) which supports more than 30 investigative teams focused on understanding, overcoming, and preventing resistance to anticancer therapies.  He has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and as Chair of the AACR Science Policy and Government Affairs Committee.  His career as a physician-scientist has focused on developing therapies targeting specific oncogenic mechanisms to treat molecularly-defined subsets of sarcomas and other cancers. He led the research and development of imatinib (Glivec®) to treat gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) as a paradigm of a mutation-driven solid tumor.  Subsequently, he designed and led the worldwide development of both sunitinib and regorafenib for GIST after resistance to imatinib. 

Based on this body of work, Dr. Demetri was awarded the 2020 David A. Karnofsky Memorial Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).  In addition to scientific advisory roles for several biopharma companies worldwide, Dr. Demetri recently co-founded IDRx, a biotech company committed to improving precision cancer medicine through best-in-class targeted agents and rational combinations of novel therapeutic approaches.