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 | Conferred By | Date |
---|---|---|
CRC Post-Doctoral Fellowship | Beatson Institute, University of Glasgow | 1993/1999 |
Education
Institution | Degree | Dept or School | End Date |
---|---|---|---|
University of Californa | Teach for UCSF Certificate in Education Leadership | 2021 | |
University of California | Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Champion Training | 2019 | |
University of Edinburgh | PhD | Molecular Oncology | |
University of Newcastle Upon Tyne | BSc | Physiological Sciences |
Grants and Funding
- Surgical Oncology Training Grant | NIH | 2020-07-15 - 2025-06-30 | Role: Administrative Director
- I-SPY2 +: Evolving the I-SPY 2 TRIAL to include MRI-directed, adaptive sequential treatment to optimize breast cancer outcomes | NIH | 2017-09-08 - 2022-08-31 | Role: 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 | NIH | 2015-09-16 - 2021-08-31 | Role: Co-Investigator
- Modeling the Impact of Targeted Therapy Based on Breast Cancer Subtypes | NIH | 2014-09-18 - 2020-08-31 | Role: Co-Investigator
- Science Leadership and Integration | NIH | 2009-09-01 - 2015-08-31 | Role: Co-Investigator
- A Systems Genetics Analysis of Cancer Risk, Progression and Therapeutic Response | NIH | 1999-09-30 - 2015-03-31 | Role: Co-Investigator
- Program Project Grant | NIH | 2003-09-26 - 2010-08-31 | Role: Co-Investigator
Research Narrative
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 Interests
Breast Cancer
Biomarkers
Carcinogenesis
Tumor Biology
Genetic Risk
Drug Resistance
Precision Medicine
Publications
- Magnetic resonance imaging insights from active surveillance of women with ductal carcinoma in situ.| | PubMed
- Cell-free DNA Concentration as a Biomarker of Response and Recurrence in HER2-Negative Breast Cancer Receiving Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy.| | PubMed
- Tumor microenvironmental determinants of high-risk DCIS progression.| | PubMed
- Epithelial Expressed B7-H4 Drives Differential Immunotherapy Response in Murine and Human Breast Cancer.| | PubMed
- Association of antibiotic exposure with residual cancer burden in HER2-negative early stage breast cancer.| | PubMed
- Systematic annotation of orphan RNAs reveals blood-accessible molecular barcodes of cancer identity and cancer-emergent oncogenic drivers.| | PubMed
- Neoadjuvant Trebananib plus Paclitaxel-based Chemotherapy for Stage II/III Breast Cancer in the Adaptively Randomized I-SPY2 Trial-Efficacy and Biomarker Discovery.| | PubMed
- Duration of Endocrine Treatment for DCIS impacts second events: Insights from a large cohort of cases at two academic medical centers| | UCSF Research Profile
- Protein signaling and drug target activation signatures to guide therapy prioritization: Therapeutic resistance and sensitivity in the I-SPY 2 Trial.| | PubMed
- Race, Gene Expression Signatures, and Clinical Outcomes of Patients With High-Risk Early Breast Cancer.| | PubMed
- 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.| | PubMed
- Computational drug repositioning for the identification of new agents to sensitize drug-resistant breast tumors across treatments and receptor subtypes.| | PubMed
- Development and testing of a polygenic risk score for breast cancer aggressiveness.| | PubMed
- Clinical significance and biology of circulating tumor DNA in high-risk early-stage HER2-negative breast cancer receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy.| | PubMed
- Association of baseline ROR1 and ROR2 gene expression with clinical outcomes in the I-SPY2 neoadjuvant breast cancer trial.| | PubMed
- Identifying Good Candidates for Active Surveillance of Ductal Carcinoma In Situ: Insights from a Large Neoadjuvant Endocrine Therapy Cohort.| | PubMed
- Safety and efficacy of HSP90 inhibitor ganetespib for neoadjuvant treatment of stage II/III breast cancer.| | PubMed
- Redefining breast cancer subtypes to guide treatment prioritization and maximize response: Predictive biomarkers across 10 cancer therapies.| | PubMed
- The breast pre-cancer atlas illustrates the molecular and micro-environmental diversity of ductal carcinoma in situ.| | PubMed
- Residual cancer burden after neoadjuvant chemotherapy and long-term survival outcomes in breast cancer: a multicentre pooled analysis of 5161 patients.| | PubMed
- Neoadjuvant T-DM1/pertuzumab and paclitaxel/trastuzumab/pertuzumab for HER2+ breast cancer in the adaptively randomized I-SPY2 trial.| | PubMed
- Ganitumab and metformin plus standard neoadjuvant therapy in stage 2/3 breast cancer.| | PubMed
- Tumor-Specific Major Histocompatibility-II Expression Predicts Benefit to Anti-PD-1/L1 Therapy in Patients With HER2-Negative Primary Breast Cancer.| | PubMed
- Durvalumab with olaparib and paclitaxel for high-risk HER2-negative stage II/III breast cancer: Results from the adaptively randomized I-SPY2 trial.| | PubMed
- PRoBE the cloud toolkit: finding the best biomarkers of drug response within a breast cancer clinical trial.| | PubMed
- Circulating tumor DNA and magnetic resonance imaging to predict neoadjuvant chemotherapy response and recurrence risk.| | PubMed
- Predicted sensitivity to endocrine therapy for stage II-III hormone receptor-positive and HER2-negative (HR+/HER2-) breast cancer before chemo-endocrine therapy.| | PubMed
- Circulating tumor DNA in neoadjuvant-treated breast cancer reflects response and survival.| | PubMed
- Mutational profiling of micro-dissected pre-malignant lesions from archived specimens.| | PubMed
- Use of 18F-FDG PET/CT as an Initial Staging Procedure for Stage II-III Breast Cancer: A Multicenter Value Analysis.| | PubMed
- Mechanism of action biomarkers predicting response to AKT inhibition in the I-SPY 2 breast cancer trial.| | PubMed
- Association of Event-Free and Distant Recurrence-Free Survival With Individual-Level Pathologic Complete Response in Neoadjuvant Treatment of Stages 2 and 3 Breast Cancer: Three-Year Follow-up Analysis for the I-SPY2 Adaptively Randomized Clinical Trial.| | PubMed
- Predictive Value of Breast MRI Background Parenchymal Enhancement for Neoadjuvant Treatment Response among HER2- Patients.| | PubMed
- Effect of Pembrolizumab Plus Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy on Pathologic Complete Response in Women With Early-Stage Breast Cancer: An Analysis of the Ongoing Phase 2 Adaptively Randomized I-SPY2 Trial.| | PubMed
- The Human Tumor Atlas Network: Charting Tumor Transitions across Space and Time at Single-Cell Resolution.| | PubMed
- Mutational signatures in tumours induced by high and low energy radiation in Trp53 deficient mice.| | PubMed
- MK-2206 and Standard Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy Improves Response in Patients With Human Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor 2-Positive and/or Hormone Receptor-Negative Breast Cancers in the I-SPY 2 Trial.| | PubMed
- Surgical Standards for Management of the Axilla in Breast Cancer Clinical Trials with Pathological Complete Response Endpoint.| | PubMed
- Evaluation of the HER/PI3K/AKT Family Signaling Network as a Predictive Biomarker of Pathologic Complete Response for Patients With Breast Cancer Treated With Neratinib in the I-SPY 2 TRIAL.| | PubMed
- DNA repair deficiency biomarkers and the 70-gene ultra-high risk signature as predictors of veliparib/carboplatin response in the I-SPY 2 breast cancer trial.| | PubMed
- Gene Expression Architecture of Mouse Dorsal and Tail Skin Reveals Functional Differences in Inflammation and Cancer.| | PubMed
- Adaptive Randomization of Neratinib in Early Breast Cancer.| | PubMed
- Adaptive Randomization of Veliparib-Carboplatin Treatment in Breast Cancer.| | PubMed
- Evolution of metastasis revealed by mutational landscapes of chemically induced skin cancers.| | PubMed
- Forty years of cancer modelling in the mouse.| | PubMed
- Automated fluorescent detection of microsatellite instability.| | PubMed
- Detection of the Replication Error Phenotype in Ovarian Cancer-PCR Analysis of Microsatellite Instability.| | PubMed
- Dependence on RAD52 and RAD1 for anticancer drug resistance mediated by inactivation of mismatch repair genes.| | PubMed
- PCR analysis of microsatellite instability.| | PubMed
- Estrogen regulation of transforming growth factor-alpha in ovarian cancer.| | PubMed
- hMLH1 expression and cellular responses of ovarian tumour cells to treatment with cytotoxic anticancer agents.| | PubMed
- Expression of the heat shock protein HSP27 in human ovarian cancer.| | PubMed
- Growth-control of human ovarian-carcinoma cells by insulin-like growth-factors.| | PubMed
- The regulation of growth and protein expression by estrogen in vitro: a study of 8 human ovarian carcinoma cell lines.| | PubMed
- Identification of M cells and their distribution in rabbit intestinal Peyer's patches and appendix.| | PubMed