MDNews - Cleveland-Akron-Canton

COVER FEATURE Leading the Way in Genomic Medicine CHARIS ENG, MD, PHD, FACP: DR. CHARIS ENG KNEW that she wanted t o s p e n d her working life in two places — the research bench and the patient bedside — even before the term "translational medicine" existed. "I knew that I wanted to be a doctor from the time I got my fi rst chemistry set at the age of four," says the Singapore- born chair and founding director of Cleveland Clinic's Genomic Medicine Institute. "But I also knew that I wanted to be a scientist or more specifi cally a physician-scientist. When I came to the U.S., I realized you could do both." Today, Dr. Eng is one of only four formally trained clinical cancer geneti- cists in the country and has produced paradigm-shifting research that has changed the understanding of cancer. She has published more than 330 peer reviewed original papers in such journals as The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, The Lancet, Nature Genetics, Nature, Cell and Molecular Cell. Since joining Cleveland Clinic in 2005, the woman whose research was once considered too "out there" to obtain NIH funding, has won more than 70 research grants and awards totaling over $20 million for her cutting edge studies of human cancer genomics, the complex interactions between genes and their impact on disease. She is a tenured profes- sor and vice chair of the Department of Genetics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, professor of Molecular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, and the Sondra J. and Stephen R. Hardis Endowed Chair in Cancer Genomic Medicine at Cleveland Clinic. In addition to being a scientist, Dr. Charis Eng is chair and founding director of Cleveland Clinic's Genomic Medicine Institute, vice chair of the Department of Genetics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and professor of Molecular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. Dr. Eng is also an American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor; serves on the U.S. Health and Human Services' Secretary's Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health and Society; and is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine.

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