Carlos Jose Suarez, MD, MS

Director, Knight Diagnostic Laboratories (KDL), Knight Cancer Institute

Professor of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, School of Medicine

Biographical Sketch

Education and training
M.D., 2004, Universidad del Valle
M.S., 2020, Stanford University (Biomedical Informatics)

Dr. Suarez is a board-certified pathologist specializing in anatomic pathology, clinical pathology, and molecular genetic pathology. He received his M.D. degree, graduating summa cum laude, from the University of the Valley (Universidad del Valle), Cali, Colombia. Following medical school, he worked as a research fellow at a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center investigating patterns of nosocomial antibiotic resistance. He later joined the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), as a postdoctoral research fellow in cancer and lung immunology. Dr. Suarez then returned to clinical practice, completing his residency in anatomic and clinical pathology at the University of Washington, Seattle, followed by a fellowship in Molecular Genetic Pathology (MGP) at Stanford University. 

After his MGP fellowship, Dr. Suarez joined the Department Pathology at Stanford University, where he was a faculty member for 11 years. During this time, he assumed progressively senior leadership roles within the Stanford Molecular Genetic Pathology Laboratory, ultimately serving as its Director. In parallel, he helped establish and co-direct Stanford’s first Molecular Tumor Board and its first Genetic Testing Stewardship program. While serving in these roles, Dr. Suarez also earned a masters degree in biomedical informatics from Stanford University.

In 2026, Dr. Suarez joined Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) and the Knight Cancer Institute as Director of the Knight Diagnostic Laboratories

Certifications

  • Anatomic and Clinical Pathology (American board of Pathology), 2013
  • Molecular Genetic Pathology (American Board of Pathology and American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics) 2014
  • Clinical Informatics (American Board of Pathology), 2022

  • Areas of interest

  • Molecular Pathology, with an emphasis on clinical molecular oncology
  • Evolution and ecology of cancer cells
  • Evolutionary medicine

  • CONTACT INFO

    suarezca@ohsu.edu

    Publications List in PubMed

    OHSU Profile

    The Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University is a pioneer in the field of precision cancer medicine. The institute's director, Brian Druker, M.D., helped prove it was possible to shut down just the cells that enable cancer to grow. This breakthrough has made once-fatal forms of the disease manageable and transformed how cancer is treated. The OHSU Knight Cancer Institute is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center between Sacramento and Seattle – an honor earned only by the nation's top cancer centers. It is headquarters for one of the National Cancer Institute's largest research collaboratives, SWOG, in addition to offering the latest treatments and technologies as well as hundreds of research studies and clinical trials.

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