Darren Sigal, MD is an Origin Partner and practicing oncologist who is strategically placed as an integrated research advisor and peer. He provides critical support for innovative research programs as they advance. By leading early phase clinical research side-by-side with emerging indigenous research teams he can address critical clinical start-up gaps and serve as a mentor to developing teams.
Dr. Sigal is the director of GI oncology at Scripps Clinic/Scripps Cancer Center. He has special interests in pancreatic cancer, colorectal cancer, and less common malignancies including cholangiocarcinoma and neuroendocrine tumors.
In addition to his clinical practice, Dr. Sigal is an active translational and clinical researcher. His areas of research focus on novel therapeutics, immune therapy, and predictive biomarkers. He has developed multiple investigator-initiated trials evaluating approaches to activate iNKT cells and modulate the tumor microenvironment. In collaboration with scientific colleagues Dr. Sigal helped identify a potential new therapy for colon cancer. He has worked with clinical diagnostic companies to identify and validate new sequencing platforms for detecting DNA gene fusions and applying circulating tumor DNA assays in pancreatic cancer patients. Dr. Sigal was actively involved in the clinical development program leading to the approval of TRK targeting agents.
Dr. Sigal has over 50 peer-reviewed manuscripts that have been published in leading oncology journals, including Cancer Cell, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Nature Medicine, Lancet Oncology, and others. He has been an early and key advisor to biotechnology companies that have gone public, including Lisata Therapeutics and Celularity where he served as the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board. He has also co-founded his own biotechnology company developing therapies targeting the tumor stroma. Dr. Sigal was issued a patent for a new therapy of neuroendocrine tumors.