Elaine Ostrander

Elaine Ann Ostrander is an American geneticist at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. She holds a number of professional academic appointments, currently serving as Distinguished and Senior Investigator and head of the NHGRI Section of Comparative Genomics; and Chief of the Cancer Genetics and Comparative Genomics Branch. She is known for her research on prostate cancer susceptibility in humans and for conducting genetic investigations with the Canis familiaris —the domestic dog— model, which she has used to study disease susceptibility and frequency and other aspects of natural variation across mammals. In 2007, her laboratory showed that much of the variation in body size of domestic dogs is due to sequence changes in a single gene encoding a growth-promoting protein.

Early life Ostrander was born in Syracuse, New York in 1958. Her father was a librarian and her mother was a school administrator. The family lived in New York, New Jersey, Nebraska, and then Washington. She has a sister and a brother, marine biologist Gary Ostrander.

Career Ostrander did her postdoctoral training at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She then went to the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. There, she began the canine genome project and, with collaborators, built the canine linkage and radiation hybrid maps. She also wrote the white paper arguing for the genome sequencing of the domestic dog. Ostrander also held academic appointments at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington and the University of Washington for 12 years, where she rose to the rank of Member in the Human Biology and Clinical Research Divisions and head of the Genetics Program.

She came to the NIH in 2004. At NHGRI, she holds a number of professional academic appointments, serving as Distinguished Investigator, Senior Scientist and Head of the Section of Comparative Genetics, and Chief of the Cancer Genetics and Comparative Genomics Branch. She has been an NCI, DOD, DOE and NHGRI grant recipient.

Ostrander has served on the faculty of a number of leading biomedical research institutions, including the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington; the University of Washington in Seattle, and NHGRI in Bethesda, Maryland. She is also affiliated as a mentor in the human genetics pre-doctoral training program at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. Her professional academic responsibilities continue to include a number of leadership roles in planning, research, peer review, and tenure and promotion efforts at a number of scientific institutions, including NHGRI; The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. At the National and International level, her leadership roles include a seat on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Fanconi Anemia Research Fund, the American Society of Human Genetics Board of Directors and Program Committees, the American Genetic Association Council, the Faculty of 1000, and many others. In addition, she currently oversees admissions for the NIH-Oxford Cambridge Scholars Program.

The NHGRI Dog Genome Project

The primary goal of this project is to develop and apply the necessary resources for the identification and study of canine genes. This will aid in an international effort to use the dog system as a model for genetics and genomics, with a special application to cancer research. Other objectives include finding genes responsible for breed-specific diseases that can inform the genetics of similar diseases in humans. Using this information, scientists hope to improve animal health while achieving a greater understanding of the genetic variants associated with human diseases.

The Ostrander lab has generated whole genome sequence data for dozens of dog breeds. She has used that and related data from 175 dog breeds to understand why dog breeds behave and look differently.

Honors Ostrander has presented her research at national and international scientific meetings, as well as given many distinguished named lectures. In 2011, she was named NIH Distinguished Investigator. She is the author of nearly 350 scientific publications that have been cited more than 18,000 times, including more than 1,200 citations to the 2005 paper she co-authored describing the genome sequence of the domestic dog.

In 1999, Ostrander was awarded the President's Award by the American Kennel Club Canine Health Foundation, followed by the AKC Canine Health Foundation Asa Mays Award for Excellence in Canine Health Research (2005) and, in 2013, she was the Lifetime Achievement Winner of the International Canine Health Award. She is also the recipient of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Innovation Award in Functional Genomics (2000) and the Lifetime Achievement Award from Weill Cornell Medical College's Prostate Cancer Institute (2011). In 2013, she won the Genetics Society of America Medal in recognition of her research on the genetic basis of phenotypic variation between dog breeds and on genome-wide associations in human cancers. She was also the recipient of the NIH Oxford Cambridge Scholars Mentorship Award in 2017.

Ostrander has also served in an advisory capacity on behalf of leading professional societies, journals, and other scientific efforts in the United States, Belgium, Sweden, and others. Ostrander is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and, in 2013, she was inducted as a Fellow. She is a member of the American Society of Human Genetics, the American Genetic Association, the American Association for Cancer Research, Women in Cancer Research, the Genetics Society of America, and the Association for Women in Science. Ostrander served a term on the board of directors of the American Society of Human Genetics and in 2013 received the Genetics Society of America medal.

Patents Ostrander holds a U.S. patent: Application 20100217534 Patent Number (20110224911), related to genetic identification of dog breeds.