Cancer Researcher Joins Department of Surgery

Tony E. Godfrey, Ph.D., has been appointed interim associate professor in the Department of Surgery, with a forthcoming appointment expected as research associate professor. Godfrey’s laboratory focuses on providing physicians with new, molecular analysis tools to improve the accuracy and timeliness of cancer diagnosis and staging, and to predict prognosis. He also plans to establish a large tissue bank with detailed clinical information for oncologists and URMC scientists.

He is one of six new surgical faculty joining the Department of Surgery. The recruits cut across and further strengthen the main priorities of the Medical Center’s Strategic Plan, according to Jeffrey H. Peters, M.D., Seymour I. Schwartz Professor and chair of the Department of Surgery.

With a reputation as a dedicated and valued collaborator, Godfrey will work with researchers in Surgery, the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center, and Pathology, as well as with co-investigators on currently funded studies at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where he was formerly on faculty. Godfrey comes to Rochester from the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, where he was an associate professor of Pathology. Click here to view complete CV.

One of Godfrey’s primary interests is the study of the gene alterations involved in esophageal cancer. He also uses microarray technology to identify ways to detect the spread of cancer to the lymph nodes.

Godfrey earned a bachelor’s of science degree, with honors, in biochemistry from Brunel University in England, followed by a doctorate in molecular biology and biochemistry, also from Brunel. He attended the University of California, San Francisco, for postdoctoral fellowships and managed UCSF’s Genome Analysis Core Facility.