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Growth Regulation of Cancer Program

Program Leader

Priscilla Furth, MD
Professor of Oncology
Director, Cellular and Molecular Biology Division

Priscilla A. Furth, Professor of Oncology, Georgetown University, educated at Brown (ScB), Yale (MD) and Mount Sinai, NYC (residency)  She completed fellowships at Harvard and NIH and was a Humboldt Fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Goettingen, Germany.  Dr. Furth has authored more than 90 publications in high impact Journals.  She and her research team explore the molecular etiology of the earliest stages of cancer progression and design strategies to reverse them.  Over the past two decades Dr. Furth has worked in the areas of disease pathogenesis, cancer and development with an emphasis on improving our understanding of hormone interactions within the mammary gland.  In particular, she developed novel mouse models of endocrine disorders.  Notable ‘firsts’ include establishment of the tetracycline inducible gene expression system in transgenic mice, identification of how hormones regulate mechanisms of mammary epithelial cell apoptosis during physiology (mammary gland involution), and investigations of the influence of different hormonal pathways and the genes that they regulate on mammary gland development and cancer progression.

More recently she has turned her attention to unraveling the first steps of hormonally mediated breast cancer progression. Dr. Furth plans to use her new mouse models for preclinical studies to increase efficacy and reduce toxicity of hormone-based therapies (both those directed against cancer and those that are used to treat other conditions) and provide insight into how specific environmental and nutritional exposures may modify hormonally mediated disease progression.

Dr. Furth’s research group focuses on alterations in molecular pathways such as the estrogen receptor (ERα) and the loss of the familial breast cancer gene BRCA1 function trigger development of mammary epithelial cell hyperplasia and cancer.  In the salivary gland her research concentrates on mechanisms of cell cycle control and differentiation that are mediated by the PP2A phosphatase.

Dr. Further is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Mammary Gland Neoplasia and Breast Cancer Research.  She is also a member of a number of review boards for the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, and private foundations.