Kenna R. Mills Shaw, Ph.D.
Cancer Genomics Laboratory
About Dr. Shaw
Kenna R. Mills Shaw, Ph.D., is passionate about doing the right thing for the right reasons for all of our patients. But she's also a realist that's trying to bring some reality to the hype surrounding precision medicine, in hopes of delivering on the promise of research-driven care for patients here and elsewhere.
Affiliations and Related Links
Fighting Cancer: It's Personal
What makes your fight against cancer personal?
I had 17 days from the time my father was diagnosed with kidney cancer to the day I held him as he died. Seventeen days. By the time we knew, the cancer had metastasized throughout his body. My dad was otherwise healthy; he ate well, exercised and hadn't smoked in more than 25 years. But I knew that cancer is not all that selective. Instead of asking "why him?" I asked, "Why not? Why not me? Why not my children?" And so I work with the hope of giving people more days, years, memories and quality of life.
What motivates and excites you?
A large piece of what we do is share our data and knowledge. I'm excited to be able to help lower barriers to data sharing here at our own institution and minimize risks, both perceived and real. I want our work to help show that data sharing enables us to accelerate discoveries.
What do you hope to accomplish?
I want to deliver on what we promise. I want to make sure our world-class scientists and clinicians have what they need to deliver change in this field.
What makes the Moon Shots Program stand out?
Cancer is a complex network. No one data type or no one cancer type will give us what we need to move novel therapies forward. The Moon Shots Program™ helps us develop experiments that dissect cancer’s complexities through multiple platforms and scientific approaches. This “multi-disciplinary” approach that makes us excel at cancer care is also what's driving our research paradigm.
What's your Moon Shot focus?
Our group, the Cancer Genomics Laboratory Moon Shot™ research platform, aims to streamline the delivery of genomic data (the sequence of the DNA and RNA in patient tumor samples) to our investigators. We aim to provide consistent, high-quality data and analysis in an environment of transparency. Our service-oriented approach means that we're constantly striving to report our progress and constantly delivering to our customers.
What else do you want people to know about you and your work?
I like to believe I set the expectation of honest, straightforward, action-oriented leadership to my team, my peers and other colleagues at our institution.