He is currently a Scientist at the American Health Foundation, the only Cancer Center in the US devoted exclusively to cancer prevention, and Professor of Medicine at New York Medical College in Valhalla NY.
He is the director of the Molecular Cancer Prevention Section. Dr. Rigas graduated summa cum laude from Athens Medical School and did his Internal Medicine residency at Brown University, in Providence RI. Subsequently, he spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow in the Graduate Department of Biochemistry at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA working on prostaglandins, enzyme kinetics and physical biochemistry.
He then did his Gastroenterology fellowship at Yale University. He spent his two research years in the Department of Human Genetics at Yale working on the use of RecA protein in homologous recombination.
He joined the Department of Medicine at Cornell in 1986, serving for two years as the acting chief of the Division of Digestive Diseases. During this period of time he developed the first ever method to study cells and tissues by infrared spectroscopy for which he was awarded several patents.
He also begun studying colon cancer, demonstrating, among others, elevated PG levels in colon cancer tissues and altered HLA antigen expression during human colon carcinogenesis.
His lab was the first to demonstrate that NSAIDs induce the expression of HLA genes, suppress proliferation and induce apoptosis of colon cancer cells and that they can achieve this by COX-independent pathways.
He has also studied in detail the effect of NSAIDs on cell cycle and the molecules that control it. Prior to joining the American Health Foundation, he served on the faculty at Rockefeller University where he conducted several studies on colon cancer. Currently, his lab is evaluating NO-NSAIDs as potential chemopreventive agents against colon cancer and the role of DNA repair (homologous and non-homologous repair mechanisms) in colon carcinogenesis. Throughout his career, Dr. Rigas has remained active clinically as a gastroenterologist, occasionally conducting clinical studies.
Of particular interest is his work on the chronobiology of biliary pain and on the SEN virus.
He is the author or co-author of numerous papers and of a textbook on gastroenterology, which has been translated into four languages including Italian.
He is an Attending Gastroenterologist at the Westchester Medical Center/New York Medical College and a member of several societies. He holds several patents for his biomedical inventions and serves or has served on editorial boards of scientific journals and on boards of pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies.
He has received several awards. His hobbies are history and the chemistry of ancient frescos.