For Yongwoo “David” Seo, MD, pancreatic cancer is a disease that demands clarity under pressure. As a surgical oncologist and physician-scientist, he works at the intersection of urgent clinical decision-making and translational research: where timing matters, therapies are intensive, and tumor biology rarely follows a predictable script.
Dr. Seo recently joined the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) Cancer Center as a member of the Discovery and Developmental Therapeutics Program, drawn by an environment where patient care and research are deeply intertwined. From the outset, he was struck by the way MCW approaches complex diseases like pancreatic cancer—not through isolated expertise, but through deep and consistent collaboration across disciplines. It’s a setting where the questions he asks in the lab are shaped directly by what he sees in clinic, and where discovery is measured by its potential to inform real treatment decisions.
Q&A With Dr. Seo
What is the one big question driving your research right now?
My research is focused on pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and on how we can apply what we’re learning in the lab to actual patient care. Precision medicine is discussed a lot, but pancreatic cancer presents a unique challenge because we often have to make treatment decisions quickly and with incomplete information.
Right now, many patients receive intensive first-line chemotherapy, knowing that a subset simply won’t respond. The only real “test” we have is to give the therapy and wait to see what happens. That can mean months of ineffective treatment, significant side effects, and lost time. The core question for me is how we can move those decisions earlier, ideally to the time of diagnosis, so we’re matching patients to the therapies most likely to help them from the start.
We also need a more nuanced understanding of risk. Traditional features like lymph node involvement or vascular invasion matter, but they don’t tell the whole story. We see patients with high-risk pathology who do very well long-term, and others with favorable features who recur quickly. That tells us there’s still a lot we don’t understand about tumor biology.
Tell us about a major project or collaboration you’re working on right now.
One of the major areas we’re building is a functional precision medicine approach using biopsy tissue, particularly core biopsies from metastatic lesions. In pancreatic cancer, early diagnostic biopsies are often limited because you can’t safely take large samples from the pancreas. As a result, we frequently don’t learn critical molecular information until after months of therapy or surgery.
When patients develop metastatic disease, often in the liver, we’re able to obtain safer, more informative biopsies. We’re using that opportunity to learn as much as possible about each patient’s tumor biology. Working closely with colleagues across the MCW Pancreatic Cancer Program, including Drs. Mandana Kamgar, Tommy McFall, and Nikki Lytle, we’re applying complementary lab models to the same biopsy material to better understand how individual tumors behave and respond to therapy.
Each of us brings a different strength—functional drug testing, systems-level biology, tumor microenvironment analysis—but together we can ask whether what we see in the lab correlates with how patients actually respond to therapy. Right now, this work is strictly for research and does not direct patient care. The long-term goal, however, is to translate this into a clinical trial where biopsy-driven testing helps guide treatment selection, particularly for patients entering second-line therapy.
What makes the MCW Pancreatic Cancer Program unique?
What stands out most is how tightly aligned the program is around the patient. Pancreatic cancer doesn’t allow for delay or fragmented decision-making, and here, the system is built to respond quickly and collaboratively.
Every week, we have a multidisciplinary pancreatic conference that brings together surgeons, medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, radiologists, pathologists, and researchers. We review new patients in real time and come to consensus quickly. That level of coordination is critical in a disease where timing, biology, and patient condition can change rapidly.
What also makes this program special is how deeply research is embedded in clinical care. Precision oncology and molecular profiling aren’t add-ons but are part of routine discussion. We also have the infrastructure to actually use that information, from tissue banking to data integration to a highly engaged molecular tumor board. And just as importantly, there’s a culture of trust. It’s never about departments or ownership. It’s about asking, together, what gives this patient the best chance.
What excites you most about where the field is headed in the next few years?
What excites me is that we’re finally getting closer to moving decision-making earlier, when it can have the most impact. For a long time in pancreatic cancer, we collected a lot of information without having clear ways to act on it. That’s starting to change.
We’re seeing more targeted and actionable therapies become available, particularly for patients with high-risk disease after surgery, and we’re getting better at understanding which patients might benefit from which approaches. That opens the door to more thoughtful treatment strategies and, just as importantly, more personalized surveillance and follow-up.
It shifts the conversation from “What are you going to do with this information?” to “How do we use it responsibly and effectively to help this patient?”
What motivated you to pursue a career in cancer research?
A lot of it comes directly from patients. I have conversations every week with people who are cautious about research or clinical trials, and understandably so. Many want to know whether any of this will actually help them.
What motivates me is the possibility that this work can make a difference for the person sitting across from me. The goal is to be able to tell patients, with confidence, “We think your tumor will respond to this therapy, not that one. And if it doesn’t, we already have other options ready.” Being able to have that conversation honestly is incredibly powerful.
Who is David Seo outside of work?
Outside of work, most of my time is spent with my family. My wife is a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Children’s Wisconsin, and we have two young kids, so our schedules are busy.
I also grew up in South Korea and moved to the U.S. when I was 11. I’ve lived in nine states, and Wisconsin is easily our favorite. We love the lake, the neighborhoods, and traditions like trips to Door County.
One thing that surprises people is that I host neighborhood poker nights. It started as a way to build community, and now I’m even thinking about turning it into a fundraiser for Audaxity. I rode the 100-mile route last year, very slowly, but I’ll be back this year, hopefully better trained.
Learn more about Dr. Seo and view his publications.