Professor of Cancer Epidemiology

Tel. +44 (0)1223 761926

Email: pp10001@medschl.cam.ac.uk

Professor Pharoah qualified in Medicine from the University of Oxford in 1986. After a series of posts in internal medicine he worked for a year in Malawi on a leprosy vaccine trial. Then he completed his training in public health medicine before taking up a post as research fellow in the CRC Human Cancer Genetics group at the University of Cambridge in 1996. Having completed his doctoral studies in 1999 he won a Cancer Research UK Senior Clinical Research Fellowship. In 2004 his fellowship was renewed and he was successful in obtaining programme grant funding. On completion of his fellowship in 2009 he was appointed Reader in Cancer Epidemiology and then promoted to a personal Chair in 2012.

The major themes of the research programme of Professor Pharoah’s group are:

1. Genetic susceptibility to ovarian cancer
2. The role of germline genetic variation in determining clinical outcome after a diagnosis of breast or ovarian cancer.
3. The molecular pathology of breast and ovarian cancer.
4. SEARCH – an ongoing study of genetic susceptibility to the common cancers

 

Teaching

Professor Pharoah is the Director of Teaching for the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge.  he also lectures for the Mphil Epidemiology, MPhil Public Health and the Medical Sciences Tripos.

 

Selected publications

DeGregori J, Pharoah PD, Sasieni P, Swanton C (2020) Cancer Screening, Surrogates of Survival, and the Soma. Cancer Cell. PubMed ID: 32946774.

Pashayan, N, Pharoah PD (2020) The challenge of early detection in cancer. Science. PubMed ID: 32381710.

Millstein J, et al (2020) Prognostic gene expression signature for high-grade serous ovarian cancer. Ann Oncol. PubMed ID: 32473302.

Phelan CM, et al (2017) Identification of 12 new susceptibility loci for different histotypes of epithelial ovarian cancer. Nat. Genet. 49. PubMed ID: 28346442.

Ramus SJ, et al (2015) Germline Mutations in the BRIP1, BARD1, PALB2, and NBN Genes in Women With Ovarian Cancer. J. Natl. Cancer Inst. 107.  PubMed ID: 26315354.

Easton DF, et al (2015)  Gene-panel sequencing and the prediction of breast-cancer risk. N. Engl. J. Med. 372, 2243-57.  PubMed ID: 26014596.

Ali HR, et al (2014)  Association between CD8+ T-cell infiltration and breast cancer survival in 12 439 patients. Ann. Oncol. 25, 1536-43.  PubMed ID: 24915873.

Pharoah PD, et al (2013) GWAS meta-analysis and replication identifies three new susceptibility loci for ovarian cancer. Nat. Genet. 45, 362-70.  PubMed ID: 23535730.

Bolton KL, et al (2012) Association between BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations and survival in women with invasive epithelial ovarian cancer. J.A.M.A. 307, 382-90.  PubMed ID: 22274685.

Goode EL,  et al (2010)  A genome-wide association study identifies susceptibility loci for ovarian cancer at 2q31 and 8q24. Nat. Genet. 42, 874-9.  PubMed ID: 20852632.

Blows FM, et al (2010)  Subtyping of breast cancer by immunohistochemistry to investigate a relationship between subtype and short and long term survival: a collaborative analysis of data for 10,159 cases from 12 studies. PLoS Med 7, e1000279.  PubMed ID: 20520800.

Song Het al (2009)  A genome-wide association study identifies a new ovarian cancer susceptibility locus on 9p22.2. Nat. Genet. 41, 996-1000.  PubMed ID: 19648919.

Pharoah PD,  et al (2008) Polygenes, risk prediction, and targeted prevention of breast cancer. N. Engl. J. Med. 358, 2796-803.  PubMed ID: 18579814.