Short Bio

Together with my colleagues in the Genetic Pathology Evaluation Center, we have taken advantage of the excellent patient outcome data available through the British Columbia Cancer Agency to create tissue microarrays (TMAs) that have allowed for examination of large numbers of cases of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer and other cancer types, correlating immunostaining and FISH results with patient outcomes.

Starting with a presentation to the International Society of Gynecological Pathology annual meeting, and subsequently published in the society journal as a review article (Gilks CB. Subclassification of ovarian surface epithelial tumors based on correlation of histologic and molecular pathologic data. Int J Gynecol Pathol. 2004;23:200-5), I have advanced the hypothesis that ovarian cancer subtypes, recognizable based on histopathological examination, are distinct diseases, with different risk factors, genetic events during oncogenesis, precursor lesions, natural history, and response to chemotherapy. We founded a local ovarian carcinoma research group, OvCaRe, and have shown that these subtypes can be reproducibly diagnosed by surgical pathologists and are studying the subtype specific molecular abnormalities in these tumors. This has been my primary academic focus for the past 5 years. This is a subject of clinical import as we move towards subtype specific treatment of ovarian carcinoma. More recently the gynecological cancer focus has expanded to include uterine and vulvar cancers.