Charis Eng, MD, PhD, FACP

2008-2009 BCRF Project:
Apart from PTEN, Dr. Eng and her colleagues believe that SDHB and SDHD, which relate to mitochondrial energy production, may be new genes which when altered cause susceptibility to Cowden syndrome. Based on her first year of BCRF funding, she is proposing now to analyze SDHB and SDHD genes as conferring particularly high likelihood of developing breast, thyroid and kidney cancers compared to those with PTEN mutations.

Genes work in pairs and exist in pairs, and PTEN is no exception. Inherited susceptibility to breast (50% of women with mutations) and/or thyroid (10%) cancer(s) occur when one of the two PTEN genes is mutated (altered) in the germline (every single cell of the body) and indeed, both mutant and normal PTEN should be "expressed" equally as has been shown for other genes. Because of the researchers' pilot data, they seek to address the hypothesis that the mutant alleles influence the normal allele to decrease its expression and that the higher ratio of mutant to normal allele may be correlated with risk of developing breast and/or thyroid cancer.

Bio:
Charis Eng is the Chairman and founding Director of the Genomic Medicine Institute of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, founding Director and attending clinical cancer geneticist of the institute’s clinical component, the Center for Personalized Genetic Healthcare, and Professor and Vice Chairman of the Department of Genetics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

She holds a joint appointment as Professor of Molecular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and is a full member of Cleveland Clinic’s Taussig Cancer Center and of the CASE Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Eng was recently honored with the Sondra J. and Stephen P. Hardis Endowed Chair in Cancer Genomic Medicine. She continues to hold an honorary appointment at the University of Cambridge. Dr. Eng’s research interests may be broadly characterized as clinical cancer genetics translational research. Her work on RET testing in multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2 and the characterization of the widening clinical spectra of PTEN gene mutations have been acknowledged as the paradigm for the practice of clinical cancer genetics.

Dr. Eng grew up in Singapore and Bristol, UK and entered the University of Chicago at the age of 16. After completing an MD and PhD at its Pritzker School of Medicine, she specialized in internal medicine at Beth Israel Hospital, Boston and trained in medical oncology at Harvard’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She was formally trained in clinical cancer genetics at the University of Cambridge and the Royal Marsden NHS Trust, UK, and in laboratory-based human cancer genetics by Bruce Ponder, MB, PhD.

At the end of 1995, Dr. Eng returned to the Farber as Assistant Professor of Medicine, and in January, 1999 was recruited by The Ohio State University as Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the Clinical Cancer Genetics Program. In 2001, she was honored with the conferment of the Davis Professorship and appointed Co-Director of the Division of Human Genetics in the Department of Internal Medicine. In 2002, she was promoted to Professor and Division Director, and was conferred the Klotz Endowed Chair. She moved to the Cleveland Clinic in Sept, 2005.

Dr. Eng has published over 290 peer reviewed original papers in such journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Lancet, Nature Genetics, Nature, Cell and Molecular Cell. She has received numerous awards and honors including election to the American Society of Clinical Investigation, to the Association of American Physicians and as Fellow of AAAS, the Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award and named a Local Legend from Ohio bestowed by the American Medical Women’s Association in conjunction with the US Senate on women physicians who have demonstrated commitment, originality, innovation and/or creativity in their fields of medicine.

Dr. Eng is the 2005 recipient of the ATA Van Meter Award at the 13th International Thyroid Conference, the 2006 Ernst Oppenheimer Award of The Endocrine Society and the 2006 American Cancer Society John Peter Minton, MD, PhD Hero of Hope Research Medal of Honor. She was the North American Editor of the Journal of Medical Genetics from 1998 to 2005, is Senior Editor of Cancer Research and Associate Editor of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism and of the American Journal of Human Genetics. Dr. Eng has been elected to a 3-year term on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Human Genetics and is serving a 5-year term on the Board of Scientific Directors of the National Human Genome Research Institute.