Professor of Genetic Epidemiology
Tel. +44 (0)1223 748629
Email: dfe20@cam.ac.uk
Background
Professor Douglas Easton is currently Director of the Centre for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology within the Department of Public Health and Primary Care. He studied Mathematical and Statistics at the University of Cambridge before gaining a PhD in Genetic Epidemiology at the University of London in 1992. In 1995 he set up the Cancer Research UK Genetic Epidemiology Unit at Cambridge, where he was a CRUK Principal Research Fellow from 2001-2011. He was awarded Professorship of Genetic Epidemiology in 2003 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2022.
Research
Professor Easton’s research focuses on the following areas:
- Identifying and characterising genetic variants associated with cancer risk, with particular emphasis on the hormone related cancers.
- Understanding the functional basis of common cancer susceptibility.
- Development of genetic risk scores to implement in cancer risk models such as BOADICEA.
- Identifying and characterising cancer risk genes, such as BRCA1, BRCA2, ATM, CHEK2 and PALB2 though population and family-based studies.
- Identifying novel markers for early detection of cancer.
- Development of statistical methods in the context of genetic epidemiology.
Specific programmes of work include:
Breast Cancer Association Consortium (BCAC): an international collaboration of more than 100 research studies co-ordinated by Professor Easton's group.
EMBRACE: Epidemiological study of mutation carriers in BRCA1, BRCA2 and other cancer susceptibility genes.
EMBED: Epidemiological study of Breast Cancer.
BRIDGES: Breast Cancer Risk after Diagonstic Gene Sequencing.
Teaching
For a number of years Professor Easton has lectured for part of the MPhil in Epidemiology and currently mentors for PhD students. He has also lectured for part of the Natural Sciences Tripos Biochemistry Course in the Department of Biochemistry.
Publications
For a full list of Publications, please go to: Professor Douglas Easton - Google Scholar