Leading Cancer Researcher Dies at 47 From Aggressive GI Cancer

Dr. Rachna Shroff, a physician-scientist who spent much of her career researching treatments for gastrointestinal cancers, has died at the age of 47. She briefly battled an aggressive form of the disease she was trying to cure. Earlier this year, Shroff, associate director of clinical investigations at the University of Arizona Cancer Center, was diagnosed with cancer of an unknown origin after she developed a swollen lymph node in May. By the end of the month, it had spread elsewhere in her body, and testing showed it had likely originated in her stomach or intestine. Her medical team initially thought it was lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, but it was later confirmed to be terminal adenocarcinoma, which grows in the cells that line the organs.