Cigall Kadoch, PhD

Cigall Kadoch, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Pediatric Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, Affiliate Faculty of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Biology at Harvard Medical School, and Institute Member and Epigenomics Program Co-Director at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She established her independent laboratory in 2014, at age 28, one of the youngest scientists ever appointed to the Harvard Medical School faculty, immediately following completion of her Ph.D. studies in Cancer Biology at Stanford University. She has quickly become a leading expert in chromatin and gene regulation and is internationally recognized for her groundbreaking studies in these areas. Specifically, her laboratory studies the structure and function of chromatin remodeling complexes such as the mammalian SWI/SNF (or BAF) complex, with emphasis on defining the mechanisms underlying cancer-specific perturbations. Of note, the recent surge in exome- and genome-wide sequencing efforts has unmasked a major, previously unappreciated contribution of these regulators to malignancy. Indeed, the genes encoding subunits of mammalian SWI/SNF complexes are mutated in over 25% of human cancers.Dr. Kadoch has received numerous prestigious awards and research grants to support her academic laboratory at Harvard, including the NIH Director's New Innovator Award, the Pew Scholar Award, the American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) Marin and Rose Wachtel Cancer Research Prize, and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Outstanding Achievement in Basic Cancer Research Award. Additionally, over the past several years, she was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list, MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35, Popular Science Brilliant 10, Business Insider Top 30 Young leaders in Biopharma and was recently named a Blavatnik National Awards Finalist.