Ruth Perets, MD, PhD

Ruth Perets, MD, PhD, is an Israeli physician-scientist. She graduated from the Hebrew University Medical School in Jerusalem and is doing a medical oncology residency in the Sheba Hospital Cancer Center in Israel. She earned a Masters degree in cancer research from the Hebrew University and earned her PhD from the Hebrew University, for work done under the supervision of Drs. Yinon Ben-Neriah and Eli Pikarsky.

While looking for a way to focus her career on ovarian cancer, Dr. Perets read about Dr. Ronnie Drapkin’s research in the field of ovarian cancer pathogenesis. In particular, she found the novel idea of the fallopian tube as the origin of ovarian carcinoma fascinating. This seemed like a provocative, yet very appealing and plausible hypothesis. In Israel, due to the unique population, hereditary ovarian cancer is responsible for approximately half of the ovarian cancer cases. In such a population, revealing the true pathogenesis of the disease could have a significant impact in prevention and early detection of the disease.

Dr. Perets have taken a leave of absence from my residency to do a post-doctoral fellowship in the Drapkin lab at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. She focuses on validating this new hypothesis in both animal models and through molecular and genomic analyses. She hopes to be able to combine the knowledge gained from her research in my clinical work back in Israel, while continuing to carry on this cutting edge research on ovarian cancer pathogenesis.