We post reviews for MSK healthcare providers who have at least 30 patient experience surveys completed. If you do not see reviews for a provider, it may be because they do not yet have enough survey responses, or the provider may not be part of the group of healthcare providers included in the survey.
Only outpatient providers are included in the survey. Healthcare providers who only work in the hospital or in urgent care are not included in the survey. Pathologists or researchers who do not provide direct care to patients do not have reviews.
As a surgeon on the Colorectal Surgery Service, I care for people with rectal, colon, and anal cancer.
Patient care in my practice revolves around selecting treatment options that will optimize patient outcomes, enhance quality of life, and adhere to a patient-centered approach. I conduct research on these diseases and have special training in surgical oncology, with an emphasis on colorectal surgery.
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I received my MD degree from the University of Texas Medical School at Houston and my PhD degree in Cell and Developmental Biology from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where I also completed my residency.
In 2013, I joined Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) as a fellow in complex surgical oncology. I served as Chief Administrative Fellow for the Department of Surgery from 2014 to 2015. At MSK I have been a co-leader on the topic of watch-and-wait after clinical complete response to neoadjuvant therapy for rectal cancer patients on our Colorectal Disease Management Team. I am actively working to improve our understanding of this management strategy for rectal cancer patients on and off trial. Currently, I am a co-investigator on Dr. Paul Rommesser’s novel trial in rectal cancer patients. Additionally, I serve on the Rectal-Anal Task Force of the National Cancer Institute’s Gastrointestinal Steering Committee and serve on the Alliance for Clinical Trials GI Surgery Working Group.
While I focus on caring for people with rectal and colon cancer,I also research how to improve responses to standard treatments for these diseases. I spend significant time doing basic and translational research in the laboratory of Charles Sawyers. My focus there is to develop better models to study rectal cancer and to uncover targeted treatments for people with rectal and colon cancer who do not respond to standard treatments. This type of research requires that I investigate the basic mechanisms and predictive markers that we can assess in the tumors of our patients with colorectal cancer. In particular, I study Smad4 loss to identify people at risk for their cancer returning.
In the past four years, I have been heavily involved with Dr. Garcia-Aguilar in administration of his National Institutes of Health funded trial, Organ Preservation in Rectal Adenocarcinoma, for which I am an active site co-lead. We are looking into the molecular mechanisms of poor response to standard neoadjuvant chemoradiation in locally advanced rectal cancer. Furthermore, we have proposed a novel method of assessing response. We are examining this in a prospective manner to find a more precise and individualized approach to caring for people with rectal cancer.
What I Do at MSK
I'm a colorectal (KOH-loh-REK-tul) surgeon, which is a doctor with special training in surgery on the colon and rectum.
Associate Attending Surgeon
Areas of Expertise
Conditions I Treat
Rectal cancer
Colon cancer
Anal cancer
My Specialties
Minimally invasive surgery
Preserving bowel, bladder, and sexual function
Clinical trials
Education & Honors
Education
MD, University of Texas Medical School at Houston
PhD, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Residencies
General Surgery - Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Fellowships
Complex Surgical Oncology - Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Board Certifications
American Board of Surgery
Insurance Information
Understanding your insurance options is an important part of managing your cancer care. We have relationships with many common healthcare providers and plans.
Colleagues
Doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering work as teams, with specialists from all different areas. This allows us to consider all your needs together, and to give you the best possible care.
Memorial Sloan Kettering's doctors and scientists are constantly developing new treatments for cancer. MSK is typically running hundreds of clinical trials at a given time.
You may be able to participate in a clinical trial even if you are new to MSK. Search our online directory to find trial information and see more about who can participate.
Visit PubMed for a full listing of Dr. Smith’s journal articles. Pubmed is an online index of research papers and other articles from the US National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.
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Disclosures
Doctors and faculty members often work with pharmaceutical, device, biotechnology, and life sciences companies, and other organizations outside of MSK, to find safe and effective cancer treatments, to improve patient care, and to educate the health care community.
MSK requires doctors and faculty members to report (“disclose”) the relationships and financial interests they have with external entities. As a commitment to transparency with our community, we make that information available to the public.
J. Joshua Smith discloses the following relationships and financial interests:
Foundation Medicine Professional Services and Activities
GlaxoSmithKline Professional Services and Activities
Johnson & Johnson Professional Services and Activities
Vaniam Group Professional Services and Activities
If you’re a patient at MSK and would like more information about your doctor’s external relationships, please talk with your doctor.
The information published here is a complement to other publicly reported data and is for a specific annual disclosure period. There may be differences between information on this and other public sites as a result of different reporting periods and/or the various ways relationships and financial interests are categorized by organizations that publish such data.
This page and data include information for a specific MSK annual disclosure period (January 1, 2023 through disclosure submission in spring 2024). This data reflects interests that may or may not still exist. This data is updated annually.
Learn more about MSK’s COI policies here. For questions regarding MSK’s COI-related policies and procedures, email MSK’s Compliance Office at ecoi@mskcc.org.
