Clifford S. Cho, M.D., is a cancer surgeon and scientist who studies the immune effects of focused ultrasound tumor treatment.

He holds appointments as chief medical officer of University of Michigan Health-West, professor in the Department of Cell Biology at Van Andel Institute and professor of surgery at the University of Michigan. Dr. Cho is an Honors graduate of Brown University and Alpha Omega Alpha graduate of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He completed his surgical residency training at University of Wisconsin, where he served as administrative chief resident. While there, he also completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in transplantation immunology. He conducted his surgical oncology fellowship training at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he served as administrative chief fellow and received the Kristen Ann Carr Fellowship.

He was subsequently appointed as a faculty member at University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. He was later appointed chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology, promoted to associate professor (with tenure), and named the inaugural

Ronald and Patricia Kissinger Professor of Surgical Oncology. In 2016, the University of Michigan recruited him as the C. Gardner Child Professor of Surgery. He also served as chief of the Division of Hepatopancreatobiliary and Advanced Gastrointestinal Surgery, vice chair of Surgical Oncology, and executive director of the Cancer Network of West Michigan. In 2024, he was named chief medical officer of University of Michigan Health-West and appointed as a professor in Van Andel Institute’s Department of Cell Biology.

Dr. Cho’s clinical practice focuses on surgical and multidisciplinary management of liver and pancreatic cancer. He has been actively involved in the clinical development of histotripsy, a novel type of non-invasive cancer therapy that uses focused ultrasound to disrupt tumors. He recently served as co-principal investigator of the Hope4Liver national multicenter clinical trial, which demonstrated the safety and efficacy of histotripsy liver tumor treatment and led to FDA approval of histotripsy.

Dr. Cho is principal investigator of a National Cancer Institute-funded research laboratory that discovered the immunostimulatory effects of histotripsy and explores the effects of histotripsy treatment on the tumor microenvironment. As a professor at VAI, he aims to create a multi-institutional translational research center that explores and harnesses the unique immunotherapeutic implications of histotripsy.