UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center Magazine Winter 2018 | Page 6
Expert in the Field
focus on cancer because “I knew I wanted to work with
patients who really needed help.” Upon completing his
residency, he entered a medical oncology fellowship at the
National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland working on
the molecular genetics of lung cancer.
Q: How did you get into gynecologic oncology from lung
cancer?
A: It’s a funny story. I was in lung cancer research when
I first became a faculty member at the NCI, and the way
most departments work is that when a new job comes up
and nobody wants it, it always falls to the youngest faculty
member. The GynOnc tumor board has to have a medical
oncologist on it, and someone had to fill this position. I was
the youngest faculty member so they sent me over there.
I had trained a little bit on ovarian cancer, but other than
that, I had not really seen other gynecologic cancers at all.
But I was fascinated by the tumor spectrum and the types of
clinical presentations that were very broad. It is a very rich
biologic and clinical field.
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Outside of his parents, who were his greatest personal
influence, Bob Young and Bob Ozols at NCI — both fathers
of platinum use in ovarian cancer — made a strong and
lasting professional impression on him.
After 20 years at NCI, during which he held numerous
leadership positions, Dr. Birrer headed back to Boston to take
prestigious positions at MGH, Harvard’s teaching hospital,
integrating clinical practice with innovative research.
His major research interests include the molecular origins
of gynecologic cancers, as well as the identification and
characterization of aberrations in oncogenes and tumor
suppressor genes in these cancers. His lab has a long history
of determining the genomic characteristics of ovarian,
cervical and endometrial cancers and using the data to form
the basis for early detection assays, prevention strategies,
and novel therapies.