Jonathan Pollack, M.D., Ph.D. Professor, Department of Pathology

Research Description: The focus of research in the Pollack lab is cancer genomics to further the understanding of human cancer, and identify strategies for improved diagnosis and therapy. They have ongoing projects in pancreatic, prostate, breast, odontogenic, and salivary gland cancers. Dr. Pollack’s background training is in molecular/cell biology, genomics/computational analysis, and clinical pathology. Major accomplishments include pioneering array-based comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) methods, discovering and characterizing novel cancer genes (e.g. NKX2-1, GAB2, CAMK1D, CRKL, CHD1, CDX2), defining new cancer biomarkers and signatures, and developing computational approaches to integrate diverse genomic-scale data. He has a productive track record in pancreatic cancer, having identified novel oncogenes (SMURF1 and GATA6), and having discovered and characterized widespread SWI/SNF alterations in pancreatic cancer.

Dr. Pollack has collaborated with PCRG members including Dr. Engleman

Selected relevant publications (Stanford PCRG members in bold):

  1. Kwei K, Bashyam M, Kao J, Ratheesh R, Reddy E, Kim Y, Montgomery K, Giacomini C, Choi Y , Chatterjee S, Karikari C, Salari K, Wang P, Hernandez-Boussard T, Swarnalata G, van de Rijn M, Maitra A, Pollack J. (2008) Genomic profiling identifies GATA6 as a candidate oncogene amplified in pancreatobiliary cancer. PLoS Genet. 4(5):e1000081.
  2. Kwei KA, Shain AH, Bair R, Montgomery K, Karikari CA, van de Rijn M, Hidalgo M, Maitra A, Bashyam MD, Pollack JR. (2011) SMURF1 amplification promotes invasiveness in pancreatic cancer. PLoS One. 2011;6(8):e23924.
  3. Shain A, Giacomini C, Matsukuma K, Karikari C, Bashyam M, Hidalgo M, Maitra A, Pollack J. (2012) Convergent structural alterations define SWItch/Sucrose NonFermentable (SWI/SNF) chromatin remodeler as a central tumor suppressive complex in pancreatic cancer. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 109(5):E252.
  4. Shain AH, Salari K, Giacomini C, Pollack JR. (2013) Integrative genomic and functional profiling of the pancreatic cancer genome. BMC Genomics. 14:624.
  5. Davidson J, Shen Z, Gong X, Pollack JR. (2018) SWI/SNF aberrations sensitize pancreatic cancer cells to DNA crosslinking agents. Oncotarget. 9:9608.