Dr. Cathrin Brisken

Biography

Cathrin Brisken, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Life Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). She is internationally recognized for her work on endocrine control of mammary gland development and breast carcinogenesis. Dr. Brisken obtained her MD and PhD in Biophysics from Georg August University Göttingen, Germany, and completed her postdoctoral work in cancer biology under Dr. R.A. Weinberg at the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research in Cambridge, MA, USA. Throughout her career, she has held notable positions at the Cancer Center of the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, as well as at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC). Dr. Brisken's research focuses on understanding the cellular and molecular underpinnings of estrogen and progesterone receptor signaling in breast cancer, exploring how recurrent exposures to both endogenous and exogenous hormones contribute to breast carcinogenesis and how to prevent and treat the disease. Her laboratory has pioneered in vivo approaches to genetically dissect the roles of reproductive hormones in mouse mammary gland development and has developed humanized mouse models to study hormonal action in human tissues. She is a member of the International Breast Cancer Study Group and has served as the Dean of the EPFL Doctoral School, which oversees more than 2000 PhD students across 18 programs. Additionally, she is a co-founder of the International Cancer Prevention Institute.

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