Dr. Antoni Ribas: portrait of a physician-scientist

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In his office, Dr. Antoni Ribas has a special collection of books — his great grandfather's notes from medical school in the late 1800s. "It's a good reminder of how much we've improved, how much medicine has progressed,” says Ribas. “I think the textbooks have changed faster in cancer in the last 10 to 15 years than in all of the centuries before.”

As a fourth generation physician, caring for patients is part of a deep family legacy for him. Dr. Ribas has spent the last 20 years at UCLA pioneering new treatments for malignant melanoma. "Probably up to half of my clinic are patients who are coming back with the cancer being smaller than when we started — some of them going years with improvement." However, even despite all of his contributions toward treating the disease, in true scientific form Dr. Ribas pushes on. "But that is obviously not enough. Knowledge brought us so far and we should continue to improve."

Watch to learn more about Dr. Ribas and for an intimate portrait of one of UCLA Health's leading physician-scientists. (This video and imagery was captured in 2019 or earlier.)