Awareness • Early Detection • Treatment • Research • Survivorship

Margie L. Clapper, Ph.D., Fox Chase Cancer Center

Margie L. Clapper, Ph.D.
Co-Leader, Keystone Program in Personalized Risk and Prevention

Dr. Margie L. Clapper, a cell biologist, is director of chemoprevention research at Fox Chase Cancer Center. A tenured member of the scientific staff, her interest in chemoprevention dates to 1991, when she created a laboratory program at the Center, one of the first of its kind, to develop and test methods of cancer chemoprevention—the use of natural or synthetic substances to prevent cancer. The goal is to identify people at high risk of cancer and to develop strategies to reduce these risks through prevention and early detection. Now internationally known for her preclinical chemoprevention studies, Clapper serves on a number of National Cancer Institute review panels, external advisory boards and professional committees, including the European Commission’s collaborative group on genetic susceptibility to environmental carcinogens. She is a member of the editorial boards of Cancer Prevention Research, Clinical Cancer Research and the Journal of Clinical Oncology and a reviewer for many other journals. Clapper’s current research uses laboratory models of heritable and colitis-associated colorectal cancer and smoke-induced lung cancer to develop clinical therapies for the prevention of early cellular changes that lead to cancer. Results from this translational laboratory research have already provided the scientific basis for several clinical chemoprevention trials at Fox Chase. Her earlier work includes the first attempt to develop a cancer preventive regimen for individuals with ulcerative colitis. A graduate of the State University of New York at Oneonta, Dr. Clapper earned her Ph.D. in genetics and cell biology at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. She joined Fox Chase as a postdoctoral associate in the department of pharmacology in 1986.

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