Pankaj Pasricha

Dr. Pasricha received his M.D. degree from the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi in 1982. Subsequently he trained in internal medicine and pulmonology at Georgetown University-DC General Hospital and Tufts-New England Medical Center, respectively. Thereafter he trained in Gastroenterology at Johns Hopkins Hospital and then stayed on faculty at Johns Hopkins University, as Director of Therapeutic Endoscopy at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Associate Director of the Marvin Schuster Center for Gastrointestinal Motility. In 1997 Dr Pasricha assumed leadership of the GI Division at the University of Texas Medical Branch, where he was the Bassel and Frances Blanton Distinguished Professorship in Internal Medicine. In August 2007, Dr. Pasricha was appointed as Chief of Gastroenterology at Stanford University of Medicine, where he served as Professor of Medicine and of Surgery until July 2012.

Dr. Pasricha then returned to Johns Hopkins where he served as Vice Chair of Medicine for innovation and commercialization at Johns Hopkins. He was also the Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Neurogastroenterology as well as the Food, Body and Mind Center. In addition, he held appointments as Professor in the Department of Neurosciences in the School of Medicine and at the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business.In October 2022, Dr. Pasricha moved to Mayo Clinic Arizona as the Chair of the Department of Medicine where he is a Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Alix School of Medicine and Professor of Clinical Practice at Arizona State University.

At a national level, Dr. Pasricha is the chair of the NIH-funded multi-center gastroparesis consortium. In the past, he served on the National Commission on Digestive Diseases, appointed by the Congress to provide a “roadmap” for progress in gastrointestinal disorders. He is also the founding Chair of the Center for Gastrointestinal Innovation and Technology, a body created by the AGA (American Gastroenterological Association) for the promotion of technological innovation in this field. Dr. Pasricha served on the FDA GI Drug Advisory Committee for several years and continues to provide advice to the Agency on an ad hoc basis.

Dr. Pasricha holds more than 60 patents issued or in process by the USPTO and has co-founded several companies within both the medtech/endoscopy and biotech GI space including Apollo Endosurgery, NeurogastRx, Orphomed, Glyscend, P4Microbiome and others. His contributions to endoscopy include the use of botulinum toxin for GI disorders, cryotherapy, novel stents, the POEM procedure and others.

These diverse activities reflect his research interests, which span endoscopic, clinical and bench research. He has been a recipient of federal funding for his research since 1995 and currently is principal investigator on several NIH grants, in addition to numerous other grants and awards. His laboratory is interested in molecular mechanisms of visceral pain and gastrointestinal motility and restoration of enteric neural function with novel strategies including neural stem cell transplants. In addition, he works on neural control of glycemic control and obesity, the gut brain axis and novel targets for pharmacological therapies. His clinical interests include GI motility disorders and abdominal pain as well as the development of novel endoscopic procedures and devices. For his contributions to date, he received the AGA Master’s Award for Outstanding Sustained Achievement in Gastroenterology and the “Nobility in Science” Award, National Pancreas Foundation. In addition, he has consistently been on Castle Connelly list America’s “Top Docs” as well as “Best Doctors” in America. He has mentored numerous junior investigators, most of whom are on faculty in prestigious universities in this country and abroad.

Dr. Pasricha has authored more than 300 manuscripts and book chapters including contributions to Cecil Textbook of Medicine, Yamada Textbook of Gastroenterology, Goodman and Gilman’s Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics and Uptodate; he has also edited and authored a textbook on visceral pain. He has been the Associate Editor for Gastroenterology, the senior editorial advisor for Digestive Diseases and Sciences and has served as Associate Editor for the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition and Associate Editor for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. He also is a consultant for numerous biomedical device and drug companies in gastroenterology and endoscopy.