Who Is Dr. Lee Rosen at UCLA – And Should You See Him?
A quick note before you read further: several people named Rosen have significant ties to UCLA. Dr. Lee S. Rosen is the oncologist who dominates search results and the one most patients are looking for. Jacob Rosen is an engineering professor who runs the Bionics Lab. Josh Rosen was the Bruins’ quarterback from 2015 to 2017. Robert Rosen served as dean of the School of Theater, Film and Television for years. If you landed here looking for one of the others, there’s a section at the bottom covering each of them briefly.
Credentials, Background, and What He Actually Does
Dr. Lee S. Rosen completed his residency and hematology-oncology fellowship at the UCLA School of Medicine in 1996. He joined the full-time faculty immediately after – no gap year, no detour – and has been there ever since, minus a period when his group operated somewhat independently before rejoining the Division of Hematology-Oncology in 2011. He currently holds the title of Health Sciences Clinical Professor of Medicine. His board certifications cover Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology, and he trained in Hematology as well. He’s a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, which is a credential that requires a peer nomination process, not just an application fee.
His clinical home is split between two campuses. The main oncology work runs through Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood. He co-directs the outpatient cancer center at Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center. There’s also a listed practice address in Encino, at 15503 Ventura Blvd. Patients coming from the west side typically see him in Santa Monica; those referred through the main hospital system usually end up in Westwood.
His professional memberships include ASCO (American Society of Clinical Oncology), AACR (American Association for Cancer Research), ASH (American Society of Hematology), and ACP. These aren’t ceremonial listings – active membership in all four simultaneously means he’s across the research literature in oncology, hematology, and cancer biology at the same time. That matters for patients with cancers that cross those specialties, which gastrointestinal malignancies often do.
What He Specializes In – and Why It’s a Narrower List Than It Looks
His primary focus is gastrointestinal malignancies, with pancreatic cancer at the center. He’s spent decades on new drug development specifically for these cancers, which is a harder problem than it sounds: pancreatic cancer has one of the lowest five-year survival rates of any common malignancy, and the drug pipeline for it has historically been thin. Rosen’s work on targeted therapy – drugs designed to attack cancer cells based on specific molecular markers rather than blasting all rapidly dividing cells – sits at the core of what makes his practice different from a generalist oncology practice.
Third-party platforms like Healthgrades list his areas of expertise as including Acute Myeloid Leukemia, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and chemotherapy alongside the GI focus. That’s technically accurate but slightly misleading in terms of where his clinical energy actually goes. Patients who come to him specifically for blood cancers are often enrolling in clinical trials rather than receiving standard-of-care treatment. His practice functions partly as a Drug Development Program – meaning some patients are there because they’ve exhausted first and second-line options and are looking for trial access, not because he’s the default hematologist for a new leukemia diagnosis.
Patient Reviews: What the Ratings Actually Show
Across UCLA Health’s internal patient experience surveys, Healthgrades, Vitals, WebMD Care, and US News Doctors, the pattern in Dr. Rosen’s reviews is consistent enough to be meaningful. Vitals shows a 3.9-star average across 15 ratings. US News flags him as highly recommended. The UCLA Health page carries verified ratings tied to the Press Ganey survey system, which aggregates responses from over 100 platforms and uses 10 standardized patient experience metrics.
What patients actually write – as opposed to what the star average implies – breaks down into several distinct themes. The most repeated one, appearing across essentially every platform, is that he makes terrifying moments feel manageable. Patients receiving a cancer diagnosis describe walking into the appointment scared and leaving with a plan they understood. One Healthgrades reviewer described him as making them feel like family after a lifetime of dreading the word “cancer.” Another, a Hodgkin’s Lymphoma patient who was under his care for over two years, credited him as the “quarterback” of their entire treatment team.
The monitoring piece comes up constantly in positive reviews. During active chemotherapy, multiple patients describe him tracking lab work changes that other oncologists might have let slide, and adjusting protocols proactively. One patient on Healthgrades – someone who had seen multiple oncologists – wrote that “no one holds a candle to Lee Rosen” on this specifically.
The critical reviews are fewer, but they’re worth reading honestly. One Healthgrades review describes a family’s experience when a relative was transitioned to hospice – the complaint was that the process felt rushed, that details about home hospice were misrepresented, and that there was a lack of emotional preparation. One review doesn’t indict a practice, but oncology is a specialty where end-of-life communication failures hit hard, and it would be dishonest to leave that out of a review summary. The overall picture is strongly positive. That one review represents real friction for a real family.
The Research Side: Drug Development and Clinical Trials
Rosen created the Cancer Therapy Development Program at UCLA early in his faculty career. The purpose was to coordinate what’s called translational research – taking discoveries from the lab bench and running them through clinical trial structures to get to actual patients. In practice, it means his clinical practice and his research program overlap: some of his patients are enrolled in phase I or phase II trials of drugs that don’t yet have FDA approval.
His UCLA Profiles publication record runs through 2025. Recent entries include a first-in-human phase I study published in ESMO Open in March 2025 evaluating PF-07209960 in patients with advanced or metastatic solid tumors, and a 2024 paper in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer on NG-350A, an anti-CD40 tumor-selective vector. Earlier work spans VEGF inhibitor studies (motesanib in GIST patients), TGF-beta receptor inhibitors, and combination immunotherapy regimens pairing PD-1 inhibitors with other agents. The breadth is real – this is not a researcher who published heavily in the 1990s and coasted. The 2025 paper lists him as a named co-investigator on a first-in-human study, which means active enrollment and patient interaction, not just co-authorship on a review article.
For patients with advanced GI malignancies who have progressed on standard treatment, this matters practically. Access to a physician running first-in-human trials means access to drugs that won’t be available for another three to five years outside of trial enrollment. That’s not a minor benefit.
How to Get an Appointment
Dr. Rosen is currently listed as accepting new patients across third-party physician directories as of 2025-2026. The practical path for most patients is through the UCLA Health provider directory at uclahealth.org – search his name directly, then use the appointment request system tied to the Santa Monica or Westwood campus depending on location. Patients who are self-referring rather than coming through a referring physician should be prepared to provide prior imaging and pathology reports upfront; the intake process for complex oncology cases at UCLA typically requires this before scheduling.
Insurance participation is worth verifying directly. Listed plans across platforms include L.A. Care Health Plan and several major commercial insurers, but this changes and third-party listings lag. Call the Division of Hematology-Oncology directly to confirm current participation before scheduling. Patients interested specifically in clinical trial enrollment should mention that when calling – eligibility screening for trials happens separately from the standard appointment process.
The Other Rosens at UCLA
Jacob Rosen is a full professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UCLA’s Samueli School, where he’s been since 2014. He directs the Bionics Lab and has joint appointments in Surgery and Bioengineering. His most cited work involves the Raven surgical robotic system – now commercialized by Applied Dexterity as an open-source research platform – and a series of upper and lower limb exoskeletons including the EXO-UL7 dual-arm wearable robot. Before UCLA, he was at the University of Washington (2001–2008) and UC Santa Cruz (2008–2013). Student reviews on Bruinwalk are not flattering. The MAE 157 course reviews are particularly rough, with students describing disorganized lectures, MATLAB-heavy homework that isn’t part of the stated curriculum, and a difficult grading structure. The research output is respected; the undergraduate teaching experience appears to be a separate matter.
Josh Rosen played quarterback for the Bruins from 2015 through 2017. He set the school record for single-season passing yards per game (341.5 in 2017), threw for 9,340 yards across three seasons with 59 touchdowns, and was selected 10th overall by the Arizona Cardinals in the 2018 draft. The NFL career went poorly – one season in Arizona, one in Miami, backup roles with San Francisco and Atlanta, and no further opportunities after that. The UCLA chapter was genuinely impressive. The fake spike against Texas A&M in a 34-point comeback win is the play most Bruins fans remember.
Robert Rosen was dean of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television from the late 1990s until 2009. He built the UCLA Film and Television Archive from a small study collection into the largest university-based film and television archive in the world. He co-founded the Film Foundation with Martin Scorsese, served on the National Film Preservation Board at the Library of Congress, and was decorated by the French government as an Officer of Arts and Letters. He passed away and is listed in memoriam on the TFT faculty page.
Nance Rosen teaches marketing and business communication courses through UCLA Extension. She’s described as the first woman director of marketing in the Fortune 500 technology sector, a former president of the Medical Marketing Association, and the author of a Wall Street Journal bestselling sales book published in 2009. Her Extension courses focus on communication strategy and career development. Elaine Rosen is a pediatrician at UCLA affiliated with the General Pediatrics Division, with research publications in eating disorder refeeding protocols and pediatric physical therapy outcomes. Henry Rosen is on staff at the UCLA Library.
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