dr. Lynne Abruzzo, former co-director of the Cytogenetics Laboratory at the James Cancer Center at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, is the new chair of the Department of Pathology at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.
Abruzzo, who will join MCG on July 1, will help support and develop research programs in the department and lead efforts to establish new collaborative research programs in the medical school that will ultimately result in better treatments for patients. .
She studies cytogenetics, the analysis of chromosomal changes that may be related to genetic diseases or cancer. Her research focuses on the genetics and pathogenesis of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, the most common adult leukemia, and other low-grade B-cell leukemias and lymphomas. She is working to identify biomarkers that measure disease progression in patients with CLL, and to determine how those markers can help doctors better manage and treat their patients.
She has been co-director of the cytogenetics lab at The James Cancer Center since 2014. A professor of cytogenetics in the Department of Pathology at OSU’s Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, she also served as director of the specialty program for the Clinical Molecular Genetics and Clinical Cytogenetics Laboratory Fellowship Program at Wexner Medical Center and the Nationwide Children’s Hospital of 2015-21.
Originally trained in hematopathology, the study of diseases of the cells that make up the blood, Abruzzo specializes in the diagnosis of lymphoma and translational research. After working in the field for nearly two decades, at places like the National Institutes of Health and the MD Anderson Cancer Center, she completed additional fellowship training in clinical cytogenetics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in 2004. At the end of her freshman year of training, she returned to MD Anderson to lead the Clinical Cytogenetics Laboratory, a position she held until joining OSU in 2013. She completed her fellowship in 2006.
“Dr. Abruzzo is an accomplished physician/scientist with a long track record of funding from the National Institutes of Health,” said Dr. David Hess, MCG Dean.
“Her research, focusing on the relationship between chromosomal changes and genetic diseases, such as CLL, is particularly impactful because CLL diagnoses account for more than 25% of new leukemia cases each year. I’m excited to see her build dynamic research collaborations with colleagues across campus, particularly with physicians and scientists at the Georgia Cancer Center, that will eventually translate into more personalized treatments for people living with this terrible and incurable disease. I am also interim chairman Dr. Sravan Kavuri extremely grateful for his steadfast leadership of the department over the past year.”
Abruzzo is a member of the Board of Scientific Advisors of the National Cancer Institute and a former member of the Board of Scientific Advisors of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. She is past president of the Society for Molecular Pathology’s Hematopathology Subsection and its Program Committee.
From 2006-18 she served on the editorial board for: Human pathology† She is the author and co-author of more than 160 articles in peer-reviewed journals and seven book chapters.
She received her medical degree from the Pritzker School of Medicine and a doctorate in pathology, both from the University of Chicago. In addition to her clinical cytogenetics fellowship at Baylor, she completed a clinical residency in anatomical and clinical pathology at the University of Michigan; a clinical hematopathology fellowship with the National Cancer Institute; and a research fellowship with the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases.