Jeffrey R. Marks

I have been engaged in basic and applied cancer research for over 28 years beginning with my post-doctoral fellowship under Arnold Levine at Princeton. Since being appointed to the faculty in the Department of Surgery at Duke, my primary interest has been towards understanding breast and ovarian cancer. I am a charter member of the NCI-Early Detection Research Network (EDRN) and have been an integral scientist in the breast and gynecologic collaborative group for 15 years including leading this group for a 5 year period. I am also a major contributor to the Cancer Genome Atlas and have worked in this context for the past 4 years. My research interests are in the molecular etiology of these diseases and understanding how key genetic events contribute to their onset and progression. My work has been very multi-disciplinary incorporating quantitative, population, genetic, and behavioral approaches.  I consider my specialty to be in the area of using human breast and ovarian cancer as the primary and only authentic model system to understand these diseases.