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Resident Research »  Leadership »  Research Committee Members »  Gillian L Hirst, PhD
Gillian L Hirst, PhD

Gillian L Hirst, PhD

  • Associate Professor of Surgery
  • Division of Surgical Oncology
  • UCSF Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center
  • Administrative Director
  • T32 Training Grant in Surgical Oncology

Contact Information

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Education

University of Newcastle-upon Tyne, UK, BSc (Hons) Physiological Sciences 1991

University of Edinburgh, PhD. Molecular Oncology, 1995

Postdoctoral Training

  • University of Glasgow, UK, Molecular Oncology, 1995 - 2000
  • University of California, San Francisco, Genetics, Oncology 2000-2003

Research Interests

  • Biomarkers
  • Breast Cancer
  • Carcinogenesis
  • Drug Resistance
  • Genetic Risk
  • Precision Medicine
  • Tumor Biology

Website Links

Biography

Gillian Hirst received her Ph.D. at the University of Edinburgh in the ICRF's (now CRUK) Molecular Oncology Unit, where she focused on the analysis and development of estrogen-regulated biomarkers for use in ovarian and breast cancers treated with anti-estrogenic therapies. As a postdoctoral fellow at CRUK Beatson Laboratories, University of Glasgow, she studied the molecular mechanisms of cisplatin resistance in ovarian cancer, with emphasis on the mismatch repair pathway. Building upon this work she studied the genetic susceptibility to DNA damaging agents in Allan Balmain's group here at UCSF. She has over ten years' experience working as a scientific program manager for multi-consortia projects and oversees biomarker development for the I-SPY2 TRIAL for early high-risk breast cancer, as well as multiple research initiatives within the Breast Care Center and the NIH Molecular Characterization of Screen-detected Lesions Consortium.

Dr. Hirst's areas of research interest span the continuum of disease risk in the analysis and development of biomarkers which will lead to better patient stratification and refined treatment interventions.

Awards & Honors

  Award  
  Confired By    
  Date    
  • CRC Post-Doctoral Fellowship
  • Beatson Institute, University of Glasgow
  • 1993 - 1999

    • Research Overview

    Dr Hirst has over 15 years of research experience and managing scientific research programs. Her research interest particularly focuses on the molecular genetics of carcinogenesis, particularly as it relates to breast and ovarian cancer and understanding how we can better utilize biomarkers for risk stratification and treatment refinement. As Scientific Program Manager in the I-SPY2 TRIAL she oversees biomarker development and works with investigators from both academia and pharma to analyze data, tumor and liquid biopsy specimen using expression arrays, next-gen sequencing, multiplex-IHC and phospho-protein arrays.

    As an investigator on a U01 which is part of the NIH Molecular Characterization of Screen-Detected Lesions (MCL) consortium, her research is focused on building tissue, pathology and imaging resources to assist in the better molecular definition of DCIS and defining who will recur with aggressive invasive cancer or not. The hope is to be able to stratify patients for either less treatment intervention or more at the earliest stages of disease, and to find potentially common drivers of aggressive disease across multiple disease types, as well as markers of indolent disease by looking at both tumor and stromal microenvironment biology.

    Research & Funding

    Data provided by UCSF Profiles, powered by CTSI
    ORCID iD: 0000-0002-4502-0035 Additional info
    • Surgical Oncology Training Grant
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      Jul 2020
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      Jun 2025
      Administrative Director
    • I-SPY2 +: Evolving the I-SPY 2 TRIAL to include MRI-directed, adaptive sequential treatment to optimize breast cancer outcomes
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      Sep 2017
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      Aug 2022
      Co-Investigator
    • Elucidating the molecular and contextual basis for IDLE ultralow risk lesions and the tumor immune microenvironment of high risk in situ and invasive breast cancers
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      Sep 2015
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      Aug 2020
      Co-Investigator
    • Modeling the Impact of Targeted Therapy Based on Breast Cancer Subtypes
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      Sep 2014
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      Aug 2019
      Co-Investigator
    • Science Leadership and Integration
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      Sep 2009
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      Aug 2014
      Co-Investigator
    • A Systems Genetics Analysis of Cancer Risk, Progression and Therapeutic Response
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      Sep 1999
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      Mar 2014
      Co-Investigator
    • Program Project Grant
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      Sep 2003
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      Aug 2010
      Co-Investigator

    Publications

    MOST RECENT PUBLICATIONS FROM A TOTAL OF 52
    Data provided by UCSF Profiles, powered by CTSI
    1. Steenbruggen TG, Wolf DM, Campbell MJ, Sanders J, Cornelissen S, Thijssen B, Salgado RA, Yau C, O-Grady N, Basu A, Bhaskaran R, Mittempergher L, Hirst GL, Coppe JP, Kok M, Sonke GS, van 't Veer LJ, Horlings HM. B-cells and regulatory T-cells in the microenvironment of HER2+ breast cancer are associated with decreased survival: a real-world analysis of women with HER2+ metastatic breast cancer. Breast Cancer Res. 2023 Oct 04; 25(1):117. View in PubMed
    2. Yu K, Basu A, Yau C, Wolf DM, Goodarzi H, Bandyopadhyay S, Korkola JE, Hirst GL, Asare S, DeMichele A, Hylton N, Yee D, Esserman L, van 't Veer L, Sirota M. Computational drug repositioning for the identification of new agents to sensitize drug-resistant breast tumors across treatments and receptor subtypes. Front Oncol. 2023; 13:1192208. View in PubMed
    3. Shieh Y, Roger J, Yau C, Wolf DM, Hirst GL, Swigart LB, Huntsman S, Hu D, Nierenberg JL, Middha P, Heise RS, Shi Y, Kachuri L, Zhu Q, Yao S, Ambrosone CB, Kwan ML, Caan BJ, Witte JS, Kushi LH, 't Veer LV, Esserman LJ, Ziv E. Development and testing of a polygenic risk score for breast cancer aggressiveness. NPJ Precis Oncol. 2023 May 15; 7(1):42. View in PubMed
    4. Magbanua MJM, Brown Swigart L, Ahmed Z, Sayaman RW, Renner D, Kalashnikova E, Hirst GL, Yau C, Wolf DM, Li W, Delson AL, Asare S, Liu MC, Albain K, Chien AJ, Forero-Torres A, Isaacs C, Nanda R, Tripathy D, Rodriguez A, Sethi H, Aleshin A, Rabinowitz M, Perlmutter J, Symmans WF, Yee D, Hylton NM, Esserman LJ, DeMichele AM, Rugo HS, van 't Veer LJ. Clinical significance and biology of circulating tumor DNA in high-risk early-stage HER2-negative breast cancer receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Cancer Cell. 2023 06 12; 41(6):1091-1102.e4. View in PubMed
    5. Parker BA, Shatsky RA, Schwab RB, Wallace AM, I-SPY 2 Consortium, Wolf DM, Hirst GL, Brown-Swigart L, Esserman LJ, van 't Veer LJ, Ghia EM, Yau C, Kipps TJ. Association of baseline ROR1 and ROR2 gene expression with clinical outcomes in the I-SPY2 neoadjuvant breast cancer trial. Breast Cancer Res Treat. 2023 Jun; 199(2):281-291. View in PubMed
    6. View All Publications

     

     
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