William Foulkes

Dr. Foulkes' research interest is on the genetics of breast, colorectal and ovarian cancer. Most specifically, the clinico-pathological features of hereditary breast cancer. His lab has discovered and characterized cancer predisposing founder mutations in Montreal populations, including a germline pathogenic missense variant in MSH2 in the Ashkenazim and disease-causing variants in PALB2 and RAD51D in French Canadians. Recently, he has focused on the characterization of the DICER1 pleiotropic tumor predisposition syndrome; with nearly fifty publications, his team has extensively defined the phenotypes linked to the syndrome defined the phenotypes linked to the syndrome and is exploring the functional impact of inherited mutations in DICER1.