Edward Kaplan,MD

Edward Kaplan, MD, joined City of Hope^® in November 2023, bringing more than three decades of experience providing care for all types of cancer and associated disorders, primarily at our Cancer Care North Shore location.

As a Medical Oncologist, Dr. Kaplan serves as the facility’s Director of Gastrointestinal Malignancies, using a multi-disciplinary approach to treating colorectal, esophageal, gastric, pancreatic, hepatic and biliary duct cancers. Dr. Kaplan also specializes in the individualized treatment of patients with other malignancies such as those of the lung, breast, kidney, bladder, ovary, prostate and testicles. He has a special interest in cancer screening programs and in helping manage the risks of cancer in patients with inherited genetic mutations such as BRCA1 and BRCA2.

Driven to provide his patients with leading-edge advances, Dr. Kaplan leverages the tools of precision medicine whenever possible, offering advanced genomic testing that analyzes the tumor at the cellular level to identify immunotherapy and other treatment options known to work against specific markers driving the cancer’s behavior.

“It’s an essential part of my practice to keep on top of the latest knowledge about which therapies are most effective in fighting malignancies with which markers,” he says. “There’s a continuous flow of exciting new developments, and it’s vital that patients facing challenging diagnoses benefit from today’s discoveries.”

Dr. Kaplan earned his medical degree from Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine in Maywood, Illinois, then went on to Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, for residency training in internal medicine. He continued at Northwestern with subspecialty training in hematology/oncology as a Galter Fellow and a Bill Veek Fellow.

Long committed to academic medicine, Dr. Kaplan has served as an assistant professor at Rush University’s medical school in Chicago, Illinois, where he was cofounder and medical director of Rush Cancer Institute’s Comprehensive Center for Gastrointestinal Malignancies. For almost 20 years, he served as the chairman of hematology and oncology and medical director of inpatient and outpatient oncology care at a large medical center in Skokie.

Dr. Kaplan has co-authored dozens of peer-reviewed biomedical publications and holds three patents for treatments designed to reduce the side effects of therapy. He has extensively researched topics such as immunotherapy and targeted agents for many types of malignancies, clinical trial protocols and the psychological and social impacts of lung cancer. He has given scores of invited lectures and presentations all over the country, on a broad range of subjects in cancer treatment.

Dr. Kaplan resides with his wife, Lisa, in Skokie, Illinois.