Karen E. Knudsen

Karen E. Knudsen is the Executive Vice President of Oncology Services, Jefferson Health and Enterprise Director of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson Health, one of 71 NCI-designated Cancer Center in the U. S.  She also holds the Hilary Koprowski Endowed Professorship, serves as Professor and Chair of the Department of Cancer Biology, and holds secondary appointments in the Departments of Urology, Medical Oncology, and Radiation Oncology at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Knudsen is an oncology researcher whose studies are focused on precision medicine in advanced prostate cancer, with an emphasis on understanding therapeutic relapse and designing new means of clinical intervention.  Her translational studies have resulted in new clinical trials targeting DNA repair, cell cycle, and hormone regulation pathways in patients with advanced disease. Knudsen and her colleagues discovered the mechanisms by which androgen signaling impacts cancer cell proliferation and DNA repair processes, and identified novel strategies for therapeutic intervention. Notable discoveries include identification of RB tumor suppressor loss as a major mechanism of therapeutic bypass, discovery of the androgen-DNA repair axis, and elucidation of androgen receptor function in the mitotic cell cycle. Her discoveries were amongst the first to propose utilization of PARP 1/2 inhibitors for advanced disease, now an Food and Drug Administration for selected prostate cancers.
Knudsen received her bachelor’s degree in biology from the George Washington University, her PhD in molecular biology from the University of California, San Diego in 1996, and her MBA with honors from the Fox School of Business and Management at Temple University. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship training at the Ludwig Cancer Research, San Diego under the mentorship of Webster K. Cavenee. She joined the faculty of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 2000, wherein she became a tenured Associate Professor.
In 2007 she was recruited to the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson Health, and founded the cancer center’s prostate cancer program, evaluated as “Outstanding” by the National Cancer Institute. After serving as the Deputy Director of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center and the Vice Provost of Thomas Jefferson University, Knudsen accepted the offer to serve as the Enterprise Director of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center in 2015, leading the cancer care and cancer discovery mission for Jefferson Health.
Knudsen has been selected or elected to serve in a number of national and international leadership roles across the oncology field. These roles include:
* President, Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI)
* Board of Directors, American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
* Board of Scientific Advisors, National Cancer Institute (NCI)
* Scientific Research Board, Genentech
* Editor-in-Chief, Molecular Cancer Research
* Associate Editor, Oncogene
* Co-founder, Prostate Cancer Foundation Women’s Forum
* Steering Committee and Past Chair, American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Genitourinary Oncology
Category:Vice-Presidents of the Executive Council
Category:Corporate directors