Dr. Garber is director of the Center for Cancer Genetics and Prevention at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses primarily on breast cancer risk assessment and risk reduction. Dr. Garber is the recipient of numerous professional awards, and currently sits on the National Cancer Institute’s National Cancer Advisory Board. She was a member of the Stand Up To Cancer Innovative Research Grants Review Committee, as well as several AACR committees and editorial boards. Dr. Garber was the president of the AACR in 2011-12.
An internationally recognized leader in clinical and translational research on breast cancer, Dr. Garber developed one of the first cancer risk and prevention clinics where programs are now being expanded to several types of cancer. She has led studies of epidemiology, cancer surveillance, cancer genetics service delivery, and chemoprevention in hereditary cancers.
Dr. Garber’s recent research has evaluated novel agents targeting DNA repair defects in treatment and prevention of triple-negative or basal-like breast cancer, the most common form of cancer in women with germline BRCA1 mutations. She has also studied pediatric cancers and sarcomas in Li-Fraumeni and hereditary gastrointestinal and stromal tumors.
Dr. Garber received her MD and MPH in 1981 from Yale University School of Medicine. She served her internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, followed by fellowships in hematology at BWH, medical oncology at DFCI, and biostatistics at the National Cancer Institute. She joined DFCI as a fellow in 1985, and now works as a medical oncologist and clinical cancer geneticist.