Elizabeth M. Swisher, MD
Professor
University of Washington
Dept. of OB/GYN
1959 NE Pacific Ave
Seattle,
WA
USA
98195
Biographical Sketch: Dr. Swisher graduated cum laude from Yale University and received her MD from the University of California at San Diego. She completed her residency at the University of Washington in Ob/Gyn and a fellowship in Gynecologic Oncology at Washington University St Louis. She joined the faculty at the University of Washington in where she has just been promoted to Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Division of Gynecologic Oncology. Both her clinical and laboratory work focus on cancer genetics and she holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Medicine, Division of Medical Genetics. She is medical director of the Breast and Ovarian Cancer Prevention Program at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. Her research is currently funded by the NIH, the Department of Defense, and the Mary Kay Foundation. The primary focus of Dr. Swisher’s lab is to study the molecular genetics of ovarian cancer, including understanding the early events of ovarian tumorigenesis and development of novel biomarkers of disease and prognosis. In collaboration with Dr. Toshi Taniguchi, Dr. Swisher’s group has elucidated a novel mechanism of resistance to chemotherapy that involves restoration of BRCA1 and BRCA2 in cancers in women with inherited mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2. Her group and others have revealed that most ovarian and peritoneal cancers that occur in high risk women actually arise from malignant cells in the epithelium of the fallopian tubes and not the ovaries. Recently, she has used massively parallel sequencing to identify a broader inherited component of ovarian, fallopian tube and peritoneal cancers than previously appreciated with the goal of allowing targeted prevention in at risk women."
Papers:
Identifying hereditary gynecologic cancer risk, BRCA1, BRCA2 and beyond
Parp Inhibitor Therapy: Therapeutic Development and Potential in Ovarian Cancer
Welcoming Remarks
Tumor BRCA mutation or high genomic LOH identify ovarian cancer patients likely to respond to rucaparib: interim results for ARIEL2 clinical trial