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Simon Gayther, PhD

Professor

Director, Center of Inherited Oncogenesis

Co-Director, Population Sciences and Prevention program

In a career spanning more than 30 years, I have built a research program that focuses on studying genetic epidemiology and functional genomics in ovarian, breast and prostate cancers focused particularly on the role of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes in the development of these cancers. My career began at Cambridge University, UK, in 1994 studying genetic susceptibility to familial and population of breast, ovarian and prostate cancers. In 2004 I moved to University College London as a Senior Lecturer, where I directed the Gynecological Cancer Research Laboratories and a research group that became internationally recognized for studying genetic epidemiology in ovarian and breast cancer populations. During this time, I developed numerous international collaborations including the leadership role in the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortia (OCAC), to identify common low penetrance susceptibility alleles in ovarian cancer. In 2009 I was appointed Deputy Director of the Dept of Gynecological Oncology and in 2010 appointed to Full Professor at UCL. Then, in 2020, I moved to the University of Southern California, USA where I played a lead role in the development of the NCI funded Genetic Association Mechanisms in Oncology (GAME-ON) consortium, which aimed to further characterize the genetic basis of several cancer sites – breast, colorectal lung, ovary and prostate - using genome wide association studies. In 2015 I moved to Cedars Sinai Medical Center as Director of Molecular Epidemiology. Here, I created and have Directed the Center for Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics (BFG), which combines genetic and epidemiological risk factor studies, statistical and computational methods for interrogating large genetic and genomic datasets, and functional genomics approaches to understand the underlying causes and outcomes of cancer development. In 2018 I was appointed Co-Director of the Cedars-Sinai Genomics Core to develop and deliver cutting edge Omics technologies to the Cedars-Sinai research community. On April 1st 2024, I was appointed Director of the Center of Inherited Oncogenesis (CIO) and Co-Director of Population Sciences and Prevention (PSP) program at UT Health San Antonio. My current research program includes: Establishing the functional role of genetic variations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes using early stage iPSC modeling of breast, ovarian and prostate cancer pathogenesis; continued efforts to discover genetic risk factors for ovarian, breast and prostate cancer through population based next generation sequencing studies; to implement cutting edge single cell and spatial omics and functional screening technologies aimed at understanding the role of transcriptomic, epigenomic and immunogenic variations in cancer progression; and to translate genetic and genomic biomarker discovery into clinical practice, including the identification of novel preventive and therapeutic targets in patient with and without BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations.