Renato G. Martins, MD, MPH
Top Doctor
Seattle Cancer Care Alliance
University of Washington School of Medicine
UW Medicine
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Lung cancer, head and neck cancers, thoracic oncology
Located at
I’m 100% committed to providing tomorrow’s treatments, today. I don’t treat cancer; I treat patients and their families — the same way I like to be treated.
”Why did you choose to treat diseases like lung cancers?
I’ve always known lung diseases impact patients and their families in profound ways, because my own father had cancer. Also, both he and my grandfather were pulmonologists specializing in treating respiratory diseases. In my challenging yet focused work with lung, head and neck cancers (from Rio de Janeiro to Seattle), I’ve dedicated myself to compassionate care and to advancing treatments that reduce the devastating impact of these diseases. When I completed my early training, I knew every two-year survivor of lung cancer by name — because there were so few. Today, because of SCCA’s advanced research and treatments, I’m seeing five-year survival for patients with advanced cancer. Things have changed dramatically.
Specialties and clinical expertise
The branch of medicine a provider practices and their areas of focus
Medical Oncology
Though SCCA offers the best cancer treatment available, I feel we can do even better. Through clinical research, we can advance treatments even further to improve our patients’ quality of life and help create more survivors of head and neck cancers. That's why my research is focused on immunotherapy, targeted therapies and designing clinical trials for head and thoracic cancers. I’ve contributed to over 80 publications and authored clinical trials that led to new therapies being used up to 73 months before FDA approval.
Today is a completely different medical landscape than just five years ago. The difference in a huge part is due to SCCA being at the forefront of developing cellular immunotherapies and the new therapies available. Our treatments administer cancer-fighting immune cells in combination with drugs that stimulate the immune system. For some lung cancer patients, a checkpoint inhibitor is now the preferred first-line therapy — before chemotherapy — to prevent cancer from blocking your body’s immune response.
What is your approach to treatment?
Caring for you as my patient includes listening deeply. I’m here to attend to your unique needs as well as your family's. At SCCA, you’ll receive the very best possible care, because our highly specialized teams focus on developing new advances in immunotherapy to offer patients new hope. You literally have access to tomorrow’s treatments, today. My goal is to increase the number of cancer patients that we’re able to cure. When a cancer is not curable, we diligently focus all our accumulated knowledge and experience on getting your disease under control so you can return to doing things you enjoy and living a productive life with a chronic health problem that is manageable.
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Gundersen Clinic, Internal Medicine
Massachusetts General, Harvard Medical School, Hematology-Oncology
Medical Oncology, 1998, 2019, American Board of Internal Medicine
MPH, Harvard University; Internship, Carney Hospital
Languages
Your care team
