Joel Palefsky, MD
Dr. Palefsky is a professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases at the UCSF School of Medicine. He is founder and chair of the HPV Working Group of the NCI AIDS Malignancy Consortium and the head of the AMC HPV Virology Core Lab. He is the protocol chair of the ANCHOR study, an eight-year, 15-site NCI/NIH-funded randomized controlled trial designed to determine whether treatment of anal high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions prevents anal cancer in HIV-infected men and women. As the founder and director of the Anal Neoplasia Clinic, Research and Education Center at UCSF, he oversees training of clinicians from around the world in high-resolution anoscopy, anal biopsy, and office-based treatment. He has an active international research program, including studies in India, Costa Rica and Thailand. He is the principal investigator of several laboratory-based and clinical research studies of HPV-associated neoplasia, particularly in the setting of HIV infection.