Dr. Melissa Bondy, Associate Director for Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences, Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, McNair Medical Institute Scholar, Susan G. Komen Scholar, and founding Director of the Childhood Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention Center. She is an established cancer epidemiologist with a multi-disciplinary focus on translational research. Her research focus bridges the fields of epidemiology with the lab and clinic. She is at the forefront of developing innovative ways to assess the roles of heredity and genetic susceptibility in the etiology of cancer, primarily brain and breast cancer. Dr. Bondy is an international leader in glioma epidemiology. She leads the largest multi-national family study of glioma patients. The goal of the research is to characterize genes in glioma families using a genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism approach and conduct linkage analysis to identify new genomic regions or loci that could harbor genes important for gliomagenesis in families, and in sporadic cases. Dr. Bondy also has on-going research in breast cancer to study molecular predictors of survival after treatment for breast cancer. When Dr. Bondy was at MD Anderson, she initiated and developed the nation’s largest Mexican-American cohort study in Harris County, Texas. The study was designed to identify risk factors (e.g. smoking) associated with disease patterns in this understudied population. Dr. Bondy is the BCM PI for the Center of Translational Environmental Health Research (CTEHR) and is the Director of the Integrated Health Sciences Core within CTEHR.
- Submitted Abstract Session Chair – Cancer Epidemiology: From Susceptibility to Risk