Stephen Jacob Chanock (born April 15, 1956) is an American physician and geneticist. He currently serves as Director of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the U.S.

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ...

(NCI).

Biography

Stephen Chanock is the son of

NIH The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

scientist

Robert M. Chanock Robert Merritt Chanock (July 8, 1924 – July 30, 2010) was an American pediatrician and virologist who made major contributions to the prevention and treatment of childhood respiratory infections in more than 50 years spent at the National Insti ...

, discoverer of

human respiratory syncytial virus Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), also called human respiratory syncytial virus (hRSV) and human orthopneumovirus, is a common, contagious virus that causes infections of the respiratory tract. It is a negative-sense, single-stranded RNA virus. ...

. Chanock completed undergraduate studies at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

in 1978, and his medical training at

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...

in 1983. He completed clinical training in

pediatrics Pediatrics ( also spelled ''paediatrics'' or ''pædiatrics'') is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In the United Kingdom, paediatrics covers many of their youth until th ...

, pediatric infectious diseases, and pediatric hematology/oncology at Boston Children’s Hospital and the

Dana–Farber Cancer Institute Dana–Farber Cancer Institute is a comprehensive cancer treatment and research institution in Boston, Massachusetts. Dana–Farber is the founding member of Dana–Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, Harvard's Comprehensive Cancer Center designated b ...

, Boston, MA. He has held multiple positions, both in research and scientific leadership over his career at the NCI. He has received numerous awards for his work in the discovery and characterization of cancer susceptibility regions in the

human genome The human genome is a complete set of nucleic acid sequences for humans, encoded as DNA within the 23 chromosome pairs in cell nuclei and in a small DNA molecule found within individual mitochondria. These are usually treated separately as the n ...

. These include the Niehaus, Southorth, Weissenbach Award in Clinical Cancer Genetics and the NIH Directors Award. Chanock is an elected member of

Association of American Physicians The Association of American Physicians (AAP) is an honorary medical society founded in 1885 by the Canadian physician Sir William Osler and six other distinguished physicians of his era for "the advancement of scientific and practical medicine." ...

, the American Epidemiology Society, the

Society for Pediatric Research A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Socie ...

and the American Association of Cancer Research. He is the author of over 1200 publications and dozens of book chapters. Since 1995, Chanock has served as the Medical Director fo
Camp Fantastic
a week-long recreational camp for pediatric cancer patients.

Research activities

Chanock co-leads several international consortial studies to identify and characterize the genetics of cancer susceptibility includin
BRCA ChallengeGame-On
and th

His work focuses specifically on efforts to clarify the genetic architecture of cancer susceptibility, the scope of genetic mosaicism and its contribution to cancer risk, and how germline variation informs our understanding of somatic alterations in cancer and investigation of how ionizing radiation causes thyroid cancer in children exposed to the Chornobyl accident and the lack of evidence for a transgenerational effect in cleanup workers following the Chornobyl accident.

Awards

* NIH Directors Award (2008, 2013, 2019, 2022) * The Niehaus, Southorth, Weissenbach Award in Clinical Cancer Genetics,

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK or MSKCC) is a cancer treatment and research institution in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, founded in 1884 as the New York Cancer Hospital. MSKCC is one of 52 National Cancer Institute– ...

, New York, NY (2010) * NCI Directors Award (2014, 2015, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022) * Society for Pediatric Research (elected 1998) * Association of American Physicians (elected 2013) * American Epidemiology Society (elected 2013) * Randy Schools Light of Love Award, Special Love, Inc (2022) * Fellow of the Academy of American Association of Cancer Research (2023)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chanock, Stephen Living people American geneticists Harvard Medical School alumni 1956 births Princeton University alumni 21st-century American physicians 20th-century American physicians Physician-scientists 20th-century American biologists 21st-century American biologists Cancer researchers American medical researchers National Institutes of Health people