Stanford Cancer Care, Now in Emeryville
These offerings, combined with subspecialized care and onsite clinical trials, have become available to a growing number of patients in counties east of the San Francisco Bay in recent years. The services coincide with an increased presence of Department of Medicine faculty at the Stanford Medicine Cancer Center in Emeryville. The academic emphasis was designed to benefit the center’s East Bay patients, and it’s clearly paying off.
One example is patients’ proximity to the many benefits of clinical trials. Previously, patients at Stanford’s multispecialty Emeryville location could participate in clinical trials, but it meant traveling to Palo Alto – a commitment of up to two and a half hours each way with multiple transfers on public transit.
Anjali Sibley, MD, is the director of the Stanford Medicine Cancer Center in Emeryville.
“Good medicine involves providing standard-of-care treatments, but also elevating to include extra things that research and academic institutions can provide,” says Anjali Sibley, MD, clinical associate professor of oncology and director of the Stanford Medicine Cancer Center in Emeryville.
Since opening in September 2020, the cancer center has been a boon to the local community. What began with two oncologists grew to today’s 12 highly specialized providers who treat cancers such as those in the bladder, breast, lung, pancreas, skin, endocrine system, kidneys, and reproductive system. Demand for services has grown steadily – from 544 patients in 2021 to 3,446 patients in 2024. As of July 2025, patients had local access to four clinical trials.
“The complex care we give to cancer patients is hard to do, and we really need to be subspecialists to some extent to be able to deliver that level of care,” says Milana Dolezal, MD, clinical associate professor of oncology and a faculty provider at the center.
Dolezal subspecializes in breast oncology, and Sibley in thoracic oncology. A third faculty provider, Neha Patel, MD, is a clinical assistant professor of oncology with a focus on genitourinary cancers.
“The complex care we give to cancer patients is hard to do, and we really need to be subspecialists to some extent to be able to deliver that level of care.” – Milana Dolezal, MD (pictured on left)
Transforming from a general cancer center to one delivering specialized and subspecialized quality care was one of Sibley’s goals, and it aligned with the mission of the Division of Oncology.
“That’s why clinical trials and other research activities are so important,” says Sibley. “We are also expanding supportive care management programs for patients, including our exercise oncology pilot study and programming in cancer and menopause.”
One of the investigations currently available to Emeryville breast cancer center patients is the SCARLET trial. It’s looking at a shorter chemo-immunotherapy regimen without toxic anthracyclines for early-stage triple-negative breast cancer.
“We are entering an era of ‘de-escalation’ of therapy where we hope to use cancer therapies that are absolutely needed and with less toxicity. We’re seeing if we can omit anthracyclines in the triple-negative space,” Dolezal points out.
“Having these large Phase III cooperative group trials available in Emeryville is so great for the East Bay breast cancer community,” she says.
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