Luis Alberto Diaz, Jr. is the Head of the Division of Solid Tumor Oncology in Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Department of Medicine.

[4] He was also a member of the Ludwig Center for Cancer Genetics and Therapeutics at Johns Hopkins, where he worked with colleagues Bert Vogelstein, Kenneth Kinzler, Nickolas Papadopoulos, Victor Velculescu and Shibin Zhou.

[8] Diaz researched the development of a liquid biopsy that can be used to test for the presence of cancer and to monitor its response to therapy.

[13][14] He also led a study of pembrolizumab to target tumors that share a particular biomarker called mismatch repair deficiency.

[15][16][17] It was the first FDA approval for a cancer treatment based on a biomarker rather than the location in the body where the tumor originated.