Laura van ‘t Veer received her MSc degree in Biology (1984) at the University of Amsterdam and a PhD in Medicine (1989) at the University of Leiden, The Netherlands. She did her postdoctoral training at the Cancer Center of the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, (1989-1991) and the Netherlands Cancer Institute (1992-1993). From 1993 until 2007, she initiated and held the positions of head of molecular pathology and head of the Genetic Counseling Clinic at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. In 2003, she was one of the founders of the Netherlands Cancer Institute spinoff, the molecular profiling company Agendia. From 2007 to 2010, she became division head of diagnostic oncology, including clinical operations and research of five clinical departments. Since 2010, she is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where she leads the Breast Oncology Program. Dr. van ‘t Veer is first author of a study showing that microarray genomics technology can predict which breast tumors will likely metastasize and which will not (Nature, 2002; NEJM, 2002). When these findings are implemented into daily clinical practice, the amount of so-called adjuvant treatments with chemotherapy for (premenopausal) breast cancer patients could be reduced by up to 30%. This microarray test now called MammaPrint, is central to the work of the translational research network TRANSBIG (Translational Research Breast International Group). The MINDACT trial is worldwide the first large-scale clinical trial implementing genomics. MammaPrint is an FDA-cleared in vitro diagnostic multigene index assay (IVDMIA), included in several international and national guidelines for breast cancer management. At UCSF, she coordinates the tissue and biomarker activities of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health-sponsored multicenter adaptive clinical trial I-SPY. Dr. van ‘t Veer received for this work the 2007 European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) Lifetime Achievement Award for translational research in breast cancer.
