Bio
Dr. Dirbas is originally from Brooklyn, NY. He graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. with Departmental Honors in Chemistry in 1981. While in college, Dr. Dirbas worked as a tech under Dr. Bruce Reitz in Dr. Norman Shumway's lab during initial studies of cyclosporin A as an immunosuppressive agent for preclinical studies of heart/lung transplantation. He then completed his M.D. training with A.O.A honors at Columbia University's College of Physician and Surgeons (now the Vagelos School of Medicine). Dr. Dirbas received the Whipple Award as the top surgery student in his medical school class. Internship and residency then followed at Stanford Hospital (now Stanford Health Care). During his professional development years Dr. Dirbas spent two years at the National Institutes of Health. He studied immunosupression for cardiac transplantation with Dr. Thomas Waldmann by performing heterotopic heart transplants in cynomologous monkeys then administering Anti-tac conjugated to Yttrium90. Dr. Dirbas returned to Stanford and as chief resident became more interested in surgical oncology. Accordingly, he then pursued a 2 year surgical oncology fellowship with Dr. John Niederhuber who later served as the head of the NCI. After completing this second fellowship, Dr. Dirbas worked as a staff surgeon at the Palo Alto VA Hospital and at Stanford Hospital for 4 years. At the Palo Alto VA he served as a surgical oncologist and ICU/critical care attending while at Stanford he served as a breast cancer surgeon and trauma surgeon (during this period Stanford achieved recognition as a Level I Trauma Center). In these early years at Stanford Dr. Dirbas routinely contributed tumor tissue to the pioneering work in the Brown/Botstein labs which led to the initial reports of molecular profiling of breast cancer. Dr. Dirbas became an assistant professor in 1999. In 2002 he initiated and served as PI for Stanford's Phase I/II studies in accelerated, partial breast irradiation, including intraoperative electron radiotherapy (IOeRT) and 3D conformal radiotherapy making Stanford an early adopter of this technology. From 2010 to 2017 Dr. Dirbas served as the physician leader of Stanford's Breast Cancer Clinical Care Program: an anonymous poll of Medscape Members in 2017 ranked Stanford in a tie for #7 in the U.S. as the place that Medscape members would most likely recommend for breast cancer care. During this period Dr. Dirbas contributed significantly to the development of Stanford's Women's Cancer Center, Stanford's South Bay Cancer Center, and design elements of Stanford Cancer Hospital while maintaining an extremely busy clinical practice. Over 220 thousand chapters have been viewed or downloaded from a breast cancer textbook Dr. Dirbas co-edited in 2011. Dr. Dirbas became a board member of the School of Oncoplastic Surgery. He took a partial sabbatical from 2019 to 2021 to renew research efforts. He is currently a co-investigator on Dr. Aaron Newman's NIH R01 grant studying breast cancer stem cells in the triple negative lineage. Dr. Dirbas initiated Stanford's interdisciplinary research program investigating the merits of FLASH radiotherapy for breast cancer. Dr. Dirbas received a pilot grant from the Stanford Cancer Institute, and more recently a 2-year grant from the California Breast Cancer Research Program for FLASH RT. His lab is focused on advancing FLASH RT research towards clinical use for breast cancer in humans while also working to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying the "FLASH effect". In October 2024, Dr. Dirbas was appointed the John and Ann Doerr Faculty Scholar in Breast Surgery. He is currently chair of the Breast Disease Site Working Group for the Society of Surgical Oncology. Dr. Dirbas continues to maintain an active breast surgery practice at the Stanford Cancer Center with the unique background training in cardiovascular surgery, immunotherapy, trauma surgery, ICU/critical care, and surgical oncology.
