Aadel Chaudhuri

About Aadel Chaudhuri

Aadel Chaudhuri MD PhD is an Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he also serves as Vice Chair of Translational Research. He is additionally Director of the Liquid Biopsy and Translational Immunogenomics Laboratory at the Mayo Clinic, and the Enterprise-wide Co-Director of the Cancer Individualized Medicine Office at the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is a physician-scientist with a lab that is dedicated to liquid biopsy research, with a number of important publications in the field which have been cited a total of 15,000 times.

Aadel completed his MD at Stanford, PhD at Caltech, and BS degrees in Biology and Computer Science at MIT with a minor in Biomedical Engineering. He was mentored in the laboratory by Nobel Laureate Phillip Sharp when he was an undergraduate at MIT, and then mentored by Nobel Laureate David Baltimore at Caltech where he did his PhD in Biology, focusing on microRNAs in cancer. At MIT, he also competed on the varsity lightweight rowing team at the NCAA Division I level. He then completed his medical school and residency at Stanford University, where he served as Chief Resident in the Department of Radiation Oncology, and further worked with National Academy of Medicine member Maximilian Diehn, demonstrating that circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) serves as a powerful biomarker for molecular residual disease (MRD) after curative-intent localized lung cancer treatment. The study that Aadel led in Maximilian’s lab was published in Cancer Discovery, and serves as a foundational paper in the ctDNA MRD field.

Aadel’s laboratory at the Mayo Clinic focuses on the development and application of liquid biopsy cancer diagnostic technologies with the goal of more precisely personalizing solid tumor malignancy treatment, as well as detecting cancer sooner in rare tumor patients. His laboratory is funded by the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the Children’s Discovery Institute, the Children’s Tumor Foundation, and the Melanoma Research Alliance.

Aadel continues to dedicate himself as a physician-scientist studying cell-free nucleic acids and immunogenomics, and treating cancer as a radiation oncologist. He is also immersed in the biotechnology sector and has co-founded multiple startup companies in this space. He is grateful for the support and opportunities given to him by the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship, and to be a member of the incredible Soros community.