Edit Entry | Edit CV

Jennifer A Doherty, PhD

Contact Information

Professional Interests

The Doherty Cancer Epidemiology Laboratory focuses on the molecular and genetic epidemiology of ovarian and lung cancers. Ovarian cancer is challenging to study for a number of reasons. It is a rare disease and therefore screening tests require nearly perfect sensitivity and specificity to be effective, and it is typically diagnosed at a late stage, with poor survival. Also, accumulating evidence has led to the understanding that ovarian cancer is not a single disease; rather, it is thought that the various ovarian cancer histologic types and high grade serous (HGSC) molecular subtypes may have different etiologies. Furthermore, almost all research of the molecular epidemiology of ovarian cancer to date has been in women of European ancestry. Therefore, my ovarian cancer research program concentrates on three main areas: 1. To elucidate similarities and differences in epidemiologic and genetic risk factors and survival across the histologies and HGSC subtypes of ovarian cancer, with the goal of understanding the underlying causes of each so that preventive measures can be developed; 2. To identify candidate genes and pathways that drive the development of each of the subtypes so that targeted treatments can be developed; and 3. To characterize epidemiologic and molecular features of ovarian cancer in diverse populations to aid in developing regionally appropriate care.

Lung cancer is responsible for more deaths than prostate, breast and colon cancers combined. While smoking cessation is a key means to reduce the incidence of lung cancer, former smokers remain at high risk for many years after quitting. Low dose CT scan screening of high-risk individuals holds promise to reduce lung cancer mortality, but the false positive rate even among this high-risk group remains quite high. My work focuses on identifying factors that differentiate between individuals with a heavy smoking history who will, and who will not, eventually develop lung cancer, with the goal of incorporating these factors into models for risk stratification for lung cancer screening regimens, and reducing false positives.

One marker that may hold promise as a susceptibility factor for lung cancer (and other cancers) is peripheral blood telomere length. Telomeres cap chromosome ends and protect cells from genomic instability. Telomere length varies by cell type and by chromosome arm within a cell. Peripheral blood telomere length has been associated with numerous cancer types; both shorter and longer telomere length has been reported to be associated with increased risk, with some studies observing U-shaped associations. As well, the genomic region including TERT, which encodes telomerase, the enzyme that maintains telomeres, is a susceptibility locus for a number of different types of cancer, with some SNPs conferring an increased risk of some cancer types, and a decreased risk of others. I am prospectively examining associations between global and chromosome arm-specific telomere length, variation in telomere structure and maintenance genes, and lung cancer risk and survival (R01 CA151989, PI JA Doherty). Additionally, through a collaboration with the Transdisciplinary Research in Cancer of the Lung (TRICL) U19 consortium, I am examining associations between thousands of SNPs in telomere structure and maintenance genes and lung cancer risk in many thousands of lung cancer cases and controls. As co-chair of the GAME-ON TERT-CLPTM1L working group, I lead a large-scale collaboration to thoroughly characterize SNP associations in telomere structure and maintenance genes across ten different cancer types in over 60,000 cancer cases and 99,000 controls (funded by an administrative supplement to R01 CA151989 (PI JA Doherty)).

Rotations and Thesis Projects

Rotations and thesis projects relating to the above research interests are available in the Doherty lab.

Dr. Doherty is not accepting rotation or thesis students for 2016-17.

Grant Information

“Telomeres and lung cancer incidence and survival” (NIH/NCI R01CA151989, PI JA Doherty)
“SNP associations in telomere structure and maintenance genes across ten different cancer types” (NIH/NCI R01CA151989, Supplement, PI JA Doherty)
“Epidemiologic factors and survival by molecular subtypes of ovarian cancer” (NIH/NCI R01CA168758, MPI JA Doherty, MA Rossing)
“A comparative transcriptome approach to elucidate drivers of carcinogenesis in ovarian cancer subtypes” (NCCC, MPI JA Doherty, C Greene)
“Telomere length and chromosomal instability across various tissue types” (NIH/NHGRI U01 HG007601, PI B Pierce)
"Characterization of Ovarian Cancer Subtypes in African American Women" (NIH/NCI R01CA200854, MPI JA Doherty, JM Schildkraut)
"Biomarkers to Improve Lung Cancer Risk Prediction and Reduce False Positive Lung Cancer Screens" (The Munck-Pfefferkorn Fund at Geisel, MPI JA Doherty, C Marsit)
"Bench to Community: A Fast-Track Global Health Strategy to Identify Women with High-Risk HPV " (The Munck-Pfefferkorn Fund at Geisel, PI G Tsongalis)
"Methylation Subtypes of High Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer in African American women" (NIH/NIGMS Center for Molecular Epidemiology COBRE at Geisel, PI JA Doherty)
"Copy Number Alterations in High Grade Serous Ovarian cancer Subtypes in African American Women" (Norris Cotton Cancer Center Prouty Pilot Award, MPI JA Doherty, B Christensen)
"Assessing smoking status from electronic health records using natural language processing—a feasibility study to build a tobacco use registry across the DH population" (Norris Cotton Cancer Center Prouty Pilot Award, MPI T Onega, JA Doherty, S Hassanpour)

Courses Taught

Course Director of Foundations of Epidemiology II: Advanced Epidemiologic Methods (QBS 131), and Course Co-Director, Integrative Biomedical Sciences II (QBS 111), both core courses for the Quantitative Biomedical Sciences PhD Program. In addition to directing these two courses, Dr. Doherty lectures in many different courses across Geisel.

Mentoring Information

Dr. Doherty is the Vice Chair of the Quantitative Biomedical Sciences PhD Program Advisory Committee. She is the primary mentor for PhD candidate James Rudd, who was awarded an F31 Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Individual Fellowship grant under her sponsorship, and post-doctoral fellow Sara Karami, who comes to us from the National Cancer Institute Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics with over 30 publications. She also co-mentors QBS PhD student Ellen Nutter with Dr. Tracy Onega.

A complete list of my publications: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/myncbi/jennifer.doherty.1/bibliograpahy/41581802/public/?sort=date&direction=descending

Biography

Dr. Doherty received a BS in Biology from Cornell University in 1990, an MS in Epidemiology from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1996, and a PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Washington in 2002. After her post-doctoral fellowship, she joined the faculty at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Dr. Doherty is currently an Associate Professor at the Geisel School of Medicine.