Robert Kratzke

Bio

Robert Kratzke, M.D, focuses his research on mesothelioma and lung cancer. During his career as a medical oncologist, he has been involved in numerous clinical trials testing new mesothelioma treatments.

A medical oncologist at the University of Minnesota's Masonic Cancer Clinic, Kratzke believes that current treatment options have room to improve and stresses the importance of multimodal therapy.

[With] single modality therapy, either with surgery or radiation or chemotherapy, the results have really been unacceptable," he said at the 2008 International Symposium on Malignant Mesothelioma.

His oncology research gravitated towards emerging therapies. He constantly strives to improve the prognoses for mesothelioma patients by exploring new modes of treatment. One of his recent clinical trials focused on proteins in mesothelioma cancer cells in relation to cancer therapy.

Kratzke is also interested in exploring gene therapy options, in which a virus is genetically altered to carry and spread a normal gene rather than a mutated one. And he is working to determine the efficacy of heated chemotherapy, a treatment used on peritoneal mesothelioma patients. This treatment involves the circulation of a hot chemotherapy solution throughout the peritoneal cavity and is meant to kill any remaining cancer cells directly after the surgical removal of a tumor.

Kratzke’s medical research has earned him significant respect in the field of oncology. He has been chosen to speak multiple times at the annual International Symposium on Malignant Mesothelioma.

Publications

In July 2011, Kratzke co-authored an article about acridine-based chemotherapy agents to suppress the growth of mesothelioma cells; his previous articles focused mainly on lung cancer and have appeared in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of Thoracic Oncology.