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William Foulkes

Dr. William Foulkes is a James McGill Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Oncology and Human Genetics at McGill University. He is a researcher-clinician who has practiced clinical cancer genetics at McGill-affiliated hospitals since 1996 and who heads cancer genetics research laboratories at two McGill-affiliated, hospital-based research institutes, the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research of the Jewish General Hospital and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre.

He is best known for his work on the clinico-pathological features of hereditary breast cancer, for his discovery of a founder mutation in MSH2 in the Ashkenazim Jewish population, his identification of a founder mutation in the breast cancer susceptibility gene PALB2 , and his contributions to describing triple negative breast cancer. In collaboration with Jacek Majewski, he identified SMARCA4 mutations in small cell carcinoma of the ovary, hypercalcemic type. He has also collaborated extensively with researchers around the world to better understand the genetics of breast, colorectal, prostate, pancreatic and ovarian cancer. Most recently, much of his research has focused on the characterization of the DICER1 pleiotropic tumor predisposition syndrome; with nearly twenty publications, his team has extended the associated phenotypes to include, among others, Wilms tumor, pituitary blastoma and pineoblastoma.