Titles and Affiliations
Professor and Chairman, Department of Community Medicine
Director, Clalit National Israeli Cancer Control Center
Research area
Understanding the origins of breast cancer in younger women.
Impact
The underlying cause of most breast cancers in younger women are not well understood, especially in certain populations. Continuous funding from BCRF enabled Dr. Rennert and his team to develop one of the largest breast cancer studies in the world, incorporating 30,000-plus individuals of Israeli and Arab descent with and without breast cancer. This study now has 20 years’ worth of data that inform health habits, risk factors and trends in breast cancer incidence and mortality. Inherited genetic mutations account for some cases of early-onset breast cancer, but the team has found that known genes that raise breast cancer risk do not explain all cases, despite many of these women having a strong family history of the disease. Dr. Rennert and his team are working to uncover what else might explain this elevated risk, with the goal of developing better tools for prevention, early detection, and personalized care for younger women.
Progress Thus Far
Dr. Rennert and his team are currently focused on understanding how a woman’s immune system may play a role, analyzing the activity of 770 immune-related genes from samples taken from younger women with breast cancer. They are studying any gene activity patterns that arise that may reveal new biological pathways involved in early-onset breast cancer.
What’s next
The team will deepen their genetic investigation using more advanced methods, including studying genetic changes within tumor tissue itself, and will begin digitizing breast cancer pathology slides in collaboration with pathology AI experts to detect patterns that distinguish cancers in younger women from those in older women. The team also plans to incorporate genome-wide data from roughly 10,000 women to build a risk score based on the genetic and behavioral patterns specific to each population studied, with the goal of better guiding prevention and early detection efforts for younger women at risk.
Biography
Gad Rennert, MD, PhD has been chairman of the Carmel Medical Center Department of Community Medicine and Epidemiology since 1992. He is a professor and the head of the public health and epidemiology teaching group at the Technion Faculty of Medicine.
Professor Rennert is also Director of the National Israeli Cancer Control Center and the Department of Epidemiology and Disease Prevention of Clalit and is leading its National Personalized Medicine Program offering testing, advice and policy on individualized molecular testing which dictates cancer risk and suitability for cancer treatments. He is responsible for the national breast and colorectal cancer detection programs in Israel and is a member of the National Oncology Council.
In 1984, Professor Rennert received his medical degree from Ben-Gurion Medical School. He received his PhD in Public Health from the University of North Carolina. He focuses his studies on understanding the behavioral and biological causes of cancer, with special emphasis on gene-environment interactions. He has been an invited speaker in key conferences, such as the Personalized Medicine World Conference, UPCP, American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Association of Cancer Research, St. Galen Cancer Prevention conference and San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
In addition to his activities at the Technion, Dr. Rennert is a reviewer for more than 30 international journals, an associate editor of two and serves on 10 editorial boards. He has published more than 200 papers in leading journals such as the NEJM, Science, and Nature.
