James Ford

Dr. Ford is a medical oncologist and geneticist at Stanford, devoted to studying the genetic basis of breast and GI cancer development, treatment and prevention. Dr. Ford graduated in 1984 Magna Cum Laude (Biology) from Yale University where he later received his M.D. degree from the School of Medicine in 1989. He was a internal medicine resident (1989-91), Clinical Fellow in Medical Oncology (1991-94), Research Fellow of Biological Sciences (1993-97) at Stanford, and joined the faculty in 1998. He is currently Associate Professor of Medicine (Oncology) and Genetics, and Director of the Stanford Cancer Genetics Clinic, at the Stanford University Medical Center. Dr. Ford’s research goals are to understand the role of genetic changes in cancer genes in the risk and development of common cancers. He studies the role of the p53 and BRCA1 tumor suppressor genes in DNA repair, and uses techniques for high-throughput genomic analyses of cancer to identify molecular signatures for targeted therapies. Recently, his team has identified a novel class of drugs that target DNA repair defective breast cancers, and have opened clinical trials at Stanford and nationally using these “PARP inhibitors” for the treatment of women with “triple-negative” breast cancer. Dr. Ford’s clinical interests include the diagnosis and treatment of patients with a hereditary pre-disposition to cancer. He runs the Stanford Cancer Genetics Clinic, that sees patients for genetic counseling and testing of hereditary cancer syndromes, and enters patients on clinical research protocols for prevention and early diagnosis of cancer in high-risk individuals.