Ronny Drapkin

About

Ronny Drapkin, MD, PhD, is the Franklin Payne Professor of Pathology in Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania. He serves as the Director of Gynecologic Cancer Research at the Basser Center for BRCA and the Penn Ovarian Cancer Research Center. Additionally, he is Co-Director of the SPORE in Ovarian Cancer at Penn-Hopkins and the Translational Center of Excellence at the Abramson Cancer Center. His research investigates the origins and early evolution of gynecologic cancers, with a primary focus on high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma (HGSOC), the most lethal subtype of ovarian cancer. His work has established the Fallopian tube epithelium as the principal site of origin for HGSOC, providing a new framework for studying disease initiation, early detection, and prevention. Drapkin's lab employs an integrated, multi-scale approach, including genetically engineered mouse models, Fallopian tube–derived cell systems, and patient-derived xenografts, coupled with genomic, spatial, and single-cell profiling technologies. His current efforts aim to build a comprehensive pre-cancer atlas of the Fallopian tube, identify early signaling pathways associated with immune evasion, and understand how the tumor microenvironment contributes to disease progression. His goal is to translate these insights into clinically actionable strategies for early detection, risk stratification, and therapeutic intervention. Drapkin is committed to training the next generation of…

Research topics

• Biology
• Genetics
• Computational biology
• Evolutionary biology
• Virology
• Mathematics
• Statistics
• Cancer research

Selected publications

• The repertoire of mutational signatures in human cancer

  Nature · 2020 · 3673 citations

  , enabled the discovery of new signatures, the separation of overlapping signatures and the decomposition of signatures into components that may represent associated-but distinct-DNA damage, repair and/or replication mechanisms. By estimating the contribution of each signature to the mutational catalogues of individual cancer genomes, we revealed associations of signatures to exogenous or endogenous exposures, as well as to defective DNA-maintenance processes. However, many signatures are of unk…

  DOI

• Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes

  Nature · 2020 · 3248 citations

  .

  DOI

• The evolutionary history of 2,658 cancers

  Nature · 2020 · 1112 citations

  , we reconstruct the life history and evolution of mutational processes and driver mutation sequences of 38 types of cancer. Early oncogenesis is characterized by mutations in a constrained set of driver genes, and specific copy number gains, such as trisomy 7 in glioblastoma and isochromosome 17q in medulloblastoma. The mutational spectrum changes significantly throughout tumour evolution in 40% of samples. A nearly fourfold diversification of driver genes and increased genomic instability are…

  DOI

• Patterns of somatic structural variation in human cancer genomes

  Nature · 2020 · 976 citations

  . Sixteen signatures of structural variation emerged. Deletions have a multimodal size distribution, assort unevenly across tumour types and patients, are enriched in late-replicating regions and correlate with inversions. Tandem duplications also have a multimodal size distribution, but are enriched in early-replicating regions-as are unbalanced translocations. Replication-based mechanisms of rearrangement generate varied chromosomal structures with low-level copy-number gains and frequent inve…

  DOI

• Comprehensive analysis of chromothripsis in 2,658 human cancers using whole-genome sequencing

  Nature Genetics · 2020 · 763 citations

  Chromothripsis is a mutational phenomenon characterized by massive, clustered genomic rearrangements that occurs in cancer and other diseases. Recent studies in selected cancer types have suggested that chromothripsis may be more common than initially inferred from low-resolution copy-number data. Here, as part of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), we analyze patterns of chromothrips…

  DOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant K08CA108748

  NIH · $680k · 2010

• Proteomic, Genomic, and Longitudinal Pathways to Ovarian Cancer Biomarker Discovery

  NIH · $8.9M · 2021–2026

• Elafin as a biomarker in serous ovarian cancers and basal-like breast tumors

  NIH · $406k · 2013–2015

Frequent coauthors

• Ursula A. Matulonis

  326 shared

• Joyce F. Liu

  242 shared

• Kathleen H. Burns

  195 shared

• David D.L. Bowtell

  Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre

  187 shared

• Ie‐Ming Shih

  184 shared

• Michelle S. Hirsch

  Brigham and Women's Hospital

  175 shared

• Tian‐Li Wang

  170 shared

• Matthew Meyerson

  Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

  162 shared

Education

• B.A., Biochemistry

  Brandeis University

  1990

• Ph.D., Biochemistry

  Rutgers Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences

  1996

• M.D., General Medicine

  Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

  1998

Awards & honors

• Franklin Payne Professor of Pathology in Obstetrics & Gyneco…
• Director, Gynecologic Cancer Research, Basser Center for BRC…
• Director, Penn Ovarian Cancer Research Center, University of…
• Co-Director, SPORE, Penn-Hopkins NIH P50 SPORE in Ovarian Ca…
• Co-Director, Translational Center of Excellence, Abramson Ca…

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