Esther M. John, MSPH, Ph.D. Professor, Dept. of Medicine, Division of Oncology, Stanford University School of Medicine; Co-Leader, Population Sciences Program, Stanford Cancer Institute, Stanford, CA

Research Summary: Dr. John’s research has focused on the epidemiology of cancer, with an emphasis on etiology and outcomes of common cancers like breast and prostate cancer in racial/ethnic minority populations and addressing cancer health disparities. She has directed multiple population-based studies, several of which are large multi-center collaborations that include a study site in the San Francisco Bay Area with its racially and ethnically diverse population. These studies include an on-going prospective cohort of breast cancer families, case-control studies of unilateral and contralateral breast cancer and prostate cancer, and most recently an on-going prospective cohort of young girls to study early life-exposures and pubertal development in the context of breast cancer family history. Over the past two decades, she has assembled extensive data and biospecimen resources from these population-based studies that have supported, and continue to support, numerous research projects and collaborations many of which investigated racial/ethnic cancer disparities. Her publications represent broad research interests with a major emphasis on the role of modifiable lifestyle factors (body size, diet, physical activity), early-life exposures, genetic susceptibility, and gene-environment interactions, and differences in risk factors between racial/ethnic groups. These interests and activities are relevant to recent studies of pancreatic cancer.

Selected relevant publications (Stanford PCRG members in bold):

  1. Dite GS, Whittemore AS, Knight JA, John EM, Milne RL, Andrulis IL, Southey MC, McCredie MRE, Giles GG, Miron A, Phipps AI, West DW, Hopper JL. Increased cancer risks for relatives of very early-onset breast cancer cases with and without BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations. Br J Cancer 2010 Sep; 103(7):1103-8. (PMCID: PMC2965877)

  2. Mocci E , Milne RL, Yuste Méndez-Villamil E, Hopper JL, John EM, Andrulis IL, Chung WK, Daly MB, Buys SS, Malats N, Goldgar DE. Risk of pancreatic cancer in breast cancer families from the Breast Cancer Family Registry. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2013 May;22(5):803-11. (PMCID: PMC3739843)

  3. Terry MB, Phillips KA, Daly MB, John EM, Andrulis IL, Buys SS, Goldgar DE, Knight JA, Whittemore AS, Chung WK, Apicella C, Hopper JL. Cohort Profile: The Breast Cancer Prospective Family Study Cohort (ProF-SC). Int J Epidemiol 2016 Jun;45(3):683-92. (PMCID: PMC5005937)