Zachariah H. Foda, MD, PhD

Gastroenterologist Zachariah Foda specializes in colon cancer and leads the Johns Hopkins Colon Cancer Risk Assessment Clinic. His areas of expertise include familial adenomatous polyposis, hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (Lynch syndrome), juvenile polyposis, Peutz-Jeghers syndrome and polyposis syndromes.  

Dr. Foda obtained his medical and postdoctoral degrees at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. He completed an internal medicine residency at The Johns Hopkins University and remained there for fellowship training in gastroenterology and hepatology.

During his doctoral training, Zachariah Foda studied how protein kinases incorporate signals from regulatory sites, and how to use this integration for therapeutic intervention. These findings provided a potential explanation for treatment failures for cancer, and were important steps in the development of more specific and therefore more useful therapies. His postdoctoral work focused on elucidating the underlying mechanisms of liquid biopsies and using whole genome sequencing based liquid biopsy approaches for early detection of gastrointestinal cancers in patients who are high risk. 

Dr. Foda’s current research interests include liquid biopsies, early detection of gastrointestinal cancers, colon cancer risk stratification and hereditary cancer syndromes. Among his clinical research interests is characterizing cancer risk for patients with multiple polyps.