RONNY DRAPKIN, MD, PhD
Ronny Drapkin, MD, PhD, is the Director of the Ovarian Cancer Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania where he also serves as the Director of Gynecologic Cancer Research at The Basser Center for BRCA and the Director of the Translational Center of Excellence for Ovarian Cancer at the PennMedicine Abramson Cancer Center.
Dr. Drapkin received his undergraduate degree from Brandeis University, his PhD from the Rutgers University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and his MD from the Rutgers University Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He completed his residency in Anatomic Pathology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and his postdoctoral fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
The Drapkin laboratory focuses on understanding the genetic, molecular, and physiological factors that drive the development of ovarian cancer. Dr. Drapkin’s work led to the appreciation that the fallopian tube is likely the site of origin for a majority of high-grade serous ovarian carcinomas. This finding was a paradigm shift in the field and motivated his lab to develop novel experimental model systems to study the fallopian tube and determine what makes it susceptible to becoming a cancer.
Dr. Drapkin is currently a Tina’s Wish Individual Investigator and Consortium Grant Recipient for 2019-2021. Read more about his work to discover genetic and protein biomarkers indicative of ovarian cancer here, and his work to develop early-detection methods here.
