George Thomas, M.D.

Medical Director, Histopathology Shared Services

PROFESSOR OF PATHOLOGY, OHSU

Biographical Sketch

George Thomas is a surgical pathologist, with clinical and research interests in prostate, kidney and bladder cancers. After completing medical school in Ireland, George continued his training at the Harvard and UCLA pathology programs. He was on the faculty at UCLA before joining OHSU. His laboratory works on decoding how targeted cancer drugs work and uses this knowledge to individualize cancer treatments.

EDUCATION

  • Degree: M.D., Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin, Ireland, 1991
  • Residency: Anatomic Pathology, UCLA, 2001 Anatomic Pathology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard, 1999
  • Fellowship: Research, UCLA, 2004

Selected Publications

Elsevier pure profile

  1. Quigley DA, Dang HX, Zhao SG, Lloyd P, Aggarwal R, Alumkal JJ, Foye A, Kothari V, Perry MD, Bailey AM, Playdle D, Barnard TJ, Zhang L, Zhang J, Youngren JF, Cieslik MP, Parolia A, Beer TM, Thomas GV, Chi KN, Gleave M, Lack NA, Zoubeidi A, Reiter RE, Rettig MB, Witte O, Ryan CJ, Fong L, Kim W, Friedlander T, Chou J, Li H, Das R, Li H, Moussavi-Baygi R, Goodarzi H, Gilbert LA, Lara PN Jr, Evans CP, Goldstein TC, St Genomic Hallmarks and Structural Variation in Metastatic Prostate Cancer
  2.  Aggarwal R, Huang J, Alumkal JJ, Zhang L, Feng FY, Thomas GV, Weinstein AS, Friedl V, Zhang C, Witte ON, Lloyd P, Gleave M, Evans CP, Youngren J, Beer TM, Rettig M, Wong CK, True L, Foye A, Playdle D, Ryan CJ, Lara P, Chi KN, Uzunangelov V, Sokolov A, Newton Y, Beltran H, Demichelis F, Rubin MA, Stuart JM, Small EJ. J Clin Oncol. 2018 Au. Clinical and Genomic Characterization of Treatment-Emergent Small-Cell Neuroendocrine Prostate Cancer: A Multi-institutional Prospective Study. 
  3.  Christopher J Ricketts, Aguirre A De Cubas, Huihui Fan, Christof C Smith, Martin Lang, Ed Reznik, Reanne Bowlby, Ewan A Gibb, Rehan Akbani, Rameen Beroukhim, Donald P Bottaro, Toni K Choueiri, Richard A Gibbs, Andrew K Godwin, Scott Haake, A Ari Hakimi, Elizabeth P Henske, James J Hsieh, Thai H Ho, Rupa S Kanchi, Bhavani Krishnan, David J Kwiatkowski, Wembin Lui, Maria J Merino, Gordon B Mills, Jerome Myers, Michael L Nickerson, Victor E Reuter,  Laura S Schmidt, C Simon Shelley, Hui Shen, Brian Shuch, Sabina Signoretti, Ramaprasad Srinivasan, Pheroze Tamboli, George Thomas, Benjamin G Vincent, Cathy D Vocke, David A Wheeler, Lixing Yang, William Y Kim, A Gordon Robertson. Cancer Genome Atlas Research Network; Paul T Spellman 21, W Kimryn Rathmell 2, W Marston Linehan 23. The Cancer Genome Atlas Comprehensive Molecular Characterization of Renal Cell Carcinoma. 
  4.  Lue HW, Podolak J, Kolahi K, Cheng L, Rao S, Garg D, Xue CH, Rantala JK, Tyner JW, Thornburg KL, Martinez-Acevedo A, Liu JJ, Amling CL, Truillet C, Louie SM, Anderson KE, Evans MJ, O'Donnell VB, Nomura DK, Drake JM, Ritz A, Thomas GV. Metabolic reprogramming ensures cancer cell survival despite oncogenic signaling blockade. Genes Dev. 2017 Oct 15. PubMed PMID: 29138276.
  5.  Linehan WM, Spellman PT, Ricketts CJ, Creighton CJ, Fei SS, Davis C, Wheeler DA, Murray BA, Schmidt L, Vocke CD, Peto M, Al Mamun AA, Shinbrot E, Sethi A, Brooks S, Rathmell WK, Brooks AN, Hoadley KA, Robertson AG, Brooks D, Bowlby R, Sadeghi S, Shen H, Weisenberger DJ, Bootwalla M, Baylin SB, Laird PW, Cherniack AD, Saksena G, Haake S, Li J, Liang H, Lu Y, Mills GB, Akbani. Cancer Genome Atlas Research Network. Comprehensive Molecular Characterization of Papillary Renal-Cell Carcinoma.
  6.  Suwaki N, Vanhecke E, Atkins KM, Graf M, Swabey K, Huang P, Schraml P, Moch H, Cassidy AM, Brewer D, Al-Lazikani B, Workman P, De-Bono J, Kaye SB, Larkin J, Gore ME, Sawyers CL, Nelson P, Beer TM, Geng H, Gao L, Qian DZ, Alumkal JJ, Thomas G, Thomas GV. Sci Transl Med. 2011 Jun 1. PubMed PMID: 21632985. A HIF-regulated VHL-PTP1B-Src signaling axis identifies a therapeutic target in renal cell carcinoma.
  7.  Thomas GV, Tran C, Mellinghoff IK, Welsbie DS, Chan E, Fueger B, Czernin J, Sawyers CL. Nat Med. 2006 Jan. PubMed PMID: 16341243. Hypoxia-inducible factor determines sensitivity to inhibitors of mTOR in kidney cancer.
  8.  Shappell SB, Thomas GV, Roberts RL, Herbert R, Ittmann MM, Rubin MA, Humphrey PA, Sundberg JP, Rozengurt N, Barrios R, Ward JM, Cardiff RD. Cancer Res. 2004 Mar 15. PubMed PMID: 15026373. Prostate pathology of genetically engineered mice: definitions and classification. The consensus report from the Bar Harbor meeting of the Mouse Models of Human Cancer Consortium Prostate Pathology Committee. 
  9.  Ellwood-Yen K, Graeber TG, Wongvipat J, Iruela-Arispe ML, Zhang J, Matusik R, Thomas GV, Sawyers CL. Cancer Cell. 2003 Sep. PubMed PMID: 14522256. Myc-driven murine prostate cancer shares molecular features with human prostate tumors.
  10. Xiangnan Guan, Fanny Polesso, Chaojie Wang, Archana Sehrawat, Reed M. Hawkins, Susan E. Murray, George V. Thomas, Breanna Caruso, Reid F. Thompson, Mary A. Wood, Christina Hipfinger, Scott A. Hammond, Julie N. Graff, Zheng Xia, Amy E. Moran. Androgen receptor activity in T cells limits checkpoint blockade efficacy. Nature 2022

The Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University is a pioneer in the field of precision cancer medicine. The institute's director, Brian Druker, M.D., helped prove it was possible to shut down just the cells that enable cancer to grow. This breakthrough has made once-fatal forms of the disease manageable and transformed how cancer is treated. The OHSU Knight Cancer Institute is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center between Sacramento and Seattle – an honor earned only by the nation's top cancer centers. It is headquarters for one of the National Cancer Institute's largest research collaboratives, SWOG, in addition to offering the latest treatments and technologies as well as hundreds of research studies and clinical trials.

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