Dr. Valeria Montoya

Dr. Valeria Montoya is a medical oncologist at Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires — one of Argentina's premier academic medical centres and a hospital with deep historical ties to the Italian immigrant community that has shaped the country's cultural and intellectual life. Founded in 1853, the hospital has grown into a sophisticated teaching institution with advanced oncology and precision medicine capabilities that attract patients from across Argentina and neighbouring countries.

With 17 years of experience in medical oncology, Dr. Montoya has built a practice centred on the systemic treatment of solid tumours, with particular expertise in breast cancer and gastrointestinal malignancies. She is a strong advocate for precision oncology — the use of molecular profiling and genomic testing to guide treatment selection — and works closely with the hospital's pathology and molecular biology laboratory to ensure that her patients receive the most genomically informed treatment strategies available.

Dr. Montoya manages patients across the full spectrum of oncology care: from newly diagnosed early-stage cancer requiring adjuvant therapy to patients with advanced metastatic disease requiring complex, multi-line treatment sequencing. She is experienced in both conventional chemotherapy and the newer classes of cancer medicines — targeted therapies, CDK4/6 inhibitors, antibody-drug conjugates, and immune checkpoint inhibitors — that have dramatically changed outcomes in many tumour types over the past decade.

She is committed to integrating palliative care principles into her oncology practice, ensuring that symptom control and quality of life are prioritised alongside disease-directed treatment. She works with Hospital Italiano's supportive oncology and palliative care teams to provide holistic, patient-centred cancer care.

Dr. Montoya graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA), where she ranked among the top graduates of her year. She undertook her Internal Medicine residency at Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, followed by a fellowship in Medical Oncology at the same institution — a pathway that gave her deep familiarity with the hospital's integrated oncology services from an early stage in her career.

She completed a research-focused Master of Science in Clinical Oncology, with her thesis examining predictive biomarkers for response to anthracycline-based chemotherapy in triple-negative breast cancer. To further develop her expertise in precision oncology, she undertook a clinical observership at a leading European cancer centre, where she gained experience in the interpretation of comprehensive genomic profiling reports and the design of biomarker-driven treatment protocols.

Dr. Montoya is board-certified in Medical Oncology by the Argentine Association of Clinical Oncology (AAOC) and is an active member of ASCO and the Latin American Cooperative Oncology Group (LACOG), which facilitates her participation in multinational clinical trials relevant to Latin American patient populations.

Dr. Montoya's clinical focus encompasses medical oncology with particular depth in breast cancer, colorectal cancer, and upper gastrointestinal malignancies. In breast oncology, she manages hormone receptor-positive, HER2-positive, and triple-negative subtypes across all stages of disease. She is experienced with the full range of contemporary breast cancer systemic therapies, including CDK4/6 inhibitors (palbociclib, ribociclib, abemaciclib), HER2-directed agents (trastuzumab, pertuzumab, trastuzumab-emtansine, trastuzumab-deruxtecan), and PARP inhibitors for BRCA-mutated disease.

In colorectal cancer, she designs chemotherapy regimens incorporating oxaliplatin- and irinotecan-based backbones combined with targeted agents (bevacizumab, cetuximab, panitumumab) according to RAS/RAF mutational status. She also has clinical experience in the management of gastric, gastroesophageal junction, and pancreatic cancers, as well as melanoma treated with checkpoint inhibitors.

Dr. Montoya regularly orders and interprets comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) for patients with advanced solid tumours, identifying actionable mutations that can guide matched targeted therapy selection or facilitate enrolment into biomarker-selected clinical trials.

Dr. Montoya's research career has focused on translational breast oncology and the application of molecular testing to guide treatment decisions in the Argentine healthcare context. Her Master's research on predictive biomarkers in triple-negative breast cancer has contributed to locally relevant data in a tumour subtype that disproportionately affects younger women and carries a significant disease burden in Latin America.

She has co-authored papers in Argentine and Latin American oncology publications and has presented at AAOC and LACOG scientific meetings. As a LACOG member, she has participated in regional clinical trials that generate evidence directly applicable to Latin American patient populations — work she considers especially important given the relative underrepresentation of this demographic in global oncology trials. Her ongoing research interests include exploring immunotherapy biomarkers in gastrointestinal malignancies and evaluating access-equity barriers to precision oncology in Argentina.

Dr. Montoya conducts consultations in Spanish, English, and Italian, making her highly accessible to a broad range of international patients. Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires provides international patient coordination services, including appointment scheduling, medical record translation, and liaison with overseas referring physicians.

For international patients seeking oncology second opinions or treatment in Buenos Aires, Dr. Montoya offers video consultations to review pathology reports, genomic profiling results, and prior treatment summaries before the patient travels to Argentina. This preliminary remote assessment allows her to provide an early oncological opinion and, where appropriate, recommend the additional investigations that will be needed for a full treatment plan. Post-treatment follow-up can be partially managed through telemedicine in collaboration with the patient's local oncologist.

Dr. Montoya holds board certification in Medical Oncology from the Argentine Association of Clinical Oncology (AAOC). She is an active member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the Latin American Cooperative Oncology Group (LACOG). Within Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, she has been recognised for her contributions to the development of the precision oncology programme and for her role in supporting the hospital's clinical trials unit. She has received commendations from Hospital Italiano's academic faculty for her contributions to oncology resident education and for her patient advocacy work.