Dr. Shailender Bhatia

Dr. Shailender Bhatia, MD has a special interest in developing approaches to harness the immune system for managing Merkel cell carcinoma and melanoma.

Dr. Bhatia received his MBBS (equivalent to MD) degree at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi, INDIA and completed his Internal Medicine Internship and Residency at the University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, CT. He completed his Post-Doctoral fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at the University of Washington/Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA.

Dr. Bhatia’s research efforts are mostly focused on clinical trials that aim at improving outcomes in skin cancers (especially Melanoma and Merkel cell carcinoma) and Kidney cancers. He is especially interested in those novel therapeutic approaches that stimulate the immune system against cancer and those that target therapy to the tumors in order to spare unnecessary toxicity.  He is the Principal Investigator for several clinical trials for MCC focused on improving the immune response against this cancer.