Alan Ashworth is currently the President of the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and Senior Vice President for clinical services, UCSF Health. In this role, he is responsible for both cancer research and cancer clinical services. He has spent much of his research career focused on uncovering and utilizing genes involved in cancer susceptibility to predict and treat cancers. Dr. Ashworth was a key member of the team that discovered the BRCA2 gene in 1995, which is linked to an increased risk of breast, ovarian and other cancers. In 2005, he identified a way to exploit genetic weaknesses (synthetic lethality) in cancer cells with mutated BRCA1 or 2 genes, leading to a new approach to cancer treatment, PARP inhibition. Three different PARP inhibitors have now been approved by the FDA for the treatment of ovarian cancer and breast cancer based on this work. Dr. Ashworth has received a number of awards including the European Society for Medical Oncology Lifetime Achievement Award, the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation David Workman Memorial Award, the Meyenberg Foundation Cancer Research Award, the Basser Global Prize, the Genetics Society Medal, the Drexel Prize in Cancer Biology and the Brinker award. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society.

https://profiles.ucsf.edu/alan.ashworth