Margaret R. Wrensch, PhD
Stanley D. Lewis and Virginia S. Lewis Endowed Chair in Brain Tumor Research, UCSF
Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, UCSF
Stanley D. Lewis and Virginia S. Lewis Endowed Chair in Brain Tumor Research, UCSF
Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, UCSF
I became a UCSF faculty member in Epidemiology and Biostatistics in 1985 and joined the Department of Neurological Surgery in 2004. I began one of the first large-scale population based epidemiologic studies of adult glioma in 1991 and have since served as PI of this NCI funded R01 entitled “Genetic and Molecular Epidemiology of Adult Glioma”. I have been a Project co-Leader of the Brain Tumor SPORE project “San Francisco Bay Area Adult Glioma Survival Study” since 2002. In 2009, we completed one of the first genome-wide association studies of adult glioma in which we identified several glioma risk loci. In 2012, we discovered a glioma risk allele that confers a six-fold risk of oligodendroglial tumors and IDH mutated astrocytomas. In 2015, we published another study in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic that defined five glioma molecular groups based on 1p/19q co-deletion, IDH mutation, and mutations in the TERT promoter that appear to have distinct mechanisms of pathogenesis and that account for over 95% of grade II-IV gliomas. We are in the process of conducting large-scale genome wide association studies of glioma survival, meningioma, and childhood leukemia. In addition, I have been a co-investigator for other multi-site studies of glioma risk and of familial glioma risk, genetic epidemiology of lung cancer, and breast cancer epidemiology. I am a leader in the brain tumor epidemiology research community having served as US Co-President of the Brain Tumor Epidemiology Consortium. My service to the NIH includes participation in numerous review panels over my 30-year career, as well as recently serving as a member on the EPIC-CASE study section.
Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, B.Sc., 1971, Genetics
Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, M.Sc., 1973, Population Genetics
University of California, Berkeley, CA, M.P.H., 1977, Epidemiology
University of California, Berkeley, CA, Ph.D., 1983, Epidemiology