Senior Scientist, Women’s College Research Institute
Director, Familial Breast Cancer Research Unit, Women's College Research Institute
Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto
Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Breast Cancer

Dr. Steven Narod is a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Breast Cancer, a professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, and a senior scientist at Women’s College Research Institute, where he leads the Familial Breast Cancer Research Unit. Dr. Narod is renowned for his key role on the team that identified the BRCA2 gene, that when mutated, substantially increase a woman’s lifetime risk of breast or ovarian cancer. With more than 500 peer-reviewed publications, he is the most-cited researcher in the world in the field of breast cancer.

Dr. Narod has collaborated with 70 centres in countries around the world, and has advanced cancer genetics through collaborations in North America, Austria, France, Italy, Poland, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Mongolia, Pakistan, Iran, Philippines, Hong Kong and Vietnam. His influence during last 15 years has profoundly shaped current knowledge of how to assess breast and ovarian cancer risk and reduce its mortality amongst carriers of BRCA1/2 mutations.

Dr. Narod’s recent research has revealed that one per cent of Jewish women in Ontario carry a BRCA1/2 mutation, that half of these women are not eligible for provincially-funded genetic testing, and that none were counseled by their primary health-care provider to pursue testing.

Most recently, Dr. Narod’s collaborative research showed that women in Poland with BRCA1 mutations have a 46 per cent lower risk of breast cancer than women in North America with the same mutation. His team is preparing to examine dietary factors that may decrease this inherited risk in Polish women.