Milestones in Gynecologic Oncology at Duke

The National Cancer Institute was established in its current form by the National Cancer Act of 1971, signed into law by President Richard Nixon (above). In 1972, the Division of Gynecologic Oncology in the Department of Ob/Gyn was founded under William T. Creasman, MD (now at MUSC Women's Care in South Carolina), the division’s first chief, pictured below. This coincided with Duke becoming an officially designated Comprehensive Cancer Center by the National Cancer Institute, then under the leadership of oncologist William Shingleton, MD.

Jeffrey Marks, PhD, and Andrew Berchuck, MD, with Duke co-authors Andrew M Davidoff; Billie Joe Kerns; Peter A. Humphrey; John C. Pence; Richard K. Dodge; Daniel Clarke-Pearson, MD; James Iglehart, MD; and Robert C Bast Jr, reported for the first time on the role of overexpression and mutation of the TP53 gene in epithelial ovarian cancer. The findings were published in Cancer Research in 1991.

In 1995, Andrew Berchuck, MD, with Kelly Marcom, MD, helped establish the Duke Hereditary Breast-Ovarian Cancer Clinic.

In 2005, Andrew Berchuck, MD, co-founded the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium (OCAC), an international group studying the molecular epidemiology of this disease.

Laura Havrilesky, MD, MHSc, was among the first investigators to explore the implications of comparative effectiveness and quality-of-life and outcomes studies in gynecologic oncology (Gynecologic Oncology, 2009)

In 2012, a research team led by Nimmi Ramanujam, PhD, began developing point-of-care technologies for cervical cancer screening and diagnosis. A low-cost Point of Care Tampon (Pocket) Colposcope was developed that could easily be inserted through a speculum to achieve comparable magnification and contrast to that of a standard colposcope. The goal was to achieve cervical cancer screening and detection in low-resource, limited-access primary care settings. This team also included Christopher Lam, PhD; Jenna Mueller, PhD; Marlee Krieger, MS, of the Duke Center for Global Women’s Health Technologies; and John Schmitt, MD, of Duke Ob/Gyn.

The Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium (OCAC) (co-founded by Andrew Berchuck, MD) identified 12 new genetic variants that increase the risk of developing epithelial ovarian cancer and confirmed the association of 18 of the previously published variants. Duke authors included Andrew Berchuck, MD; and Marjorie Riggan, BS. The findings were published by Nature Genetics in 2017.

In 2019, the multi-institutional Endometrial Cancer Molecularly Targeted Therapy Consortium was established with a $1 million Kay Yow Cancer Fund/V Foundation for Cancer Research grant to Angeles Alvarez Secord, MD, MHSc, and Duke Cancer Institute. This national group is focused on research into molecular alterations and targeted biological therapies in endometrial cancer.

In 2021, Angeles Alvarez Secord, MD,MHSc, was named president of the Society for Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) for the 2023-24 term.

In 2021, Duke Ob/Gyn opened a new, state-of-the-art fertility center. For more than 25 years, Duke Fertility Center has been a nationwide leader in fertility services. Among the therapies available are onco-fertility, bringing together oncology and reproductive endocrinology specialties to maximize the reproductive potential of cancer patients and survivors. This novel collaboration between the Duke Cancer Institute Supportive Care & Survivorship Center and the Duke Fertility Center is helping cancer patients' family-dreams come true.

Brittany Davidson, MD, with Laura J. Havrilesky, MD, MHSc, and several current and former residents developed a model to predict individualized estimates of outpatient opioid use post-operatively (at hospital discharge) for a broad range of patients undergoing gynecologic surgery; published in 2022 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Open Network.