Roy A. Jensen, M.D.

Professional Background

Dr. Jensen was appointed the director of The University of Kansas Cancer Center (KU Cancer Center) in 2004. As a result of a broad-based university, community, and regional effort, The University of Kansas Cancer Center was designated as a cancer center by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in July 2012 and as a comprehensive cancer center in 2022. Dr. Jensen is currently Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Professor of Cancer Biology, and the William R. Jewell, M.D. Distinguished Kansas Masonic Professor at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Prior to his appointment at KU Cancer Center, Jensen was a member of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and a faculty member in Pathology, Cell Biology, and Cancer Biology for 13 years.

Dr. Jensen graduated from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1984, and remained there to complete a residency in Anatomic Pathology and a Surgical Pathology fellowship with Dr. David Page. Following his clinical training he accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the NCI in the laboratory of Dr. Stuart Aaronson. After he joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University, Dr. Jensen focused his research on understanding the function of BRCA1 and BRCA2 and their role in breast neoplasia, and in the characterization of premalignant breast disease at both the morphologic and molecular levels. He currently has over 150 scientific publications and has lectured widely on the clinical and molecular aspects of breast cancer pathology.

Dr. Jensen has served on numerous grant review panels, study sections, and site visit teams for the NIH, the Department of Defense-Breast Cancer Research Program, the Medical Research Council of Canada, the California Breast Cancer Research Program, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. Jensen has served on the Science Policy and Governmental Affairs Committees for the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and as a member of the AACR Pathology Task Force, AACR Publications Committee, and the AACR Nominating Committee. Jensen also serves as a director-at-large for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network Board of Directors. In 2013, he was elected to the Board of Directors for the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) and served as the vice president (2016-2018), president (2018-2020), and past president of AACI from 2020-2023. Jensen served as a member of NCI’s Subcommittee A from 2014-2018, chair of Subcommittee A from 2018-2020, and also served on the Director’s Working Group for the Board of Scientific Advisors to the National Cancer Institute.

• MD, Vanderbilt Univ.
• BS, Pittsburg State Univ.
• AA, Neosho County Cmty. Col.

Research

Overview

Dr. Jensen's research has been focused on the breast cancer susceptibility gene 1 (BRCA1) and breast cancer for more than 20 years. He was part of the team to provide the first direct evidence that BRCA1 was a tumor suppressor. Currently, Jensen's lab has several projects aimed at understanding BRCA1 regulation and how we might enhance the ability of BRCA1 to act as a tumor suppressor.

• Jensen, R., A, Page, D., L, Dupont, W., D, Rogers, L., W. 1989. Invasive breast cancer risk in women with sclerosing adenosis.. Cancer, 64 (10), 1977-83
• Stecklein, S., R, Kumaraswamy, E, Behbod, F, Wang, W, Chaguturu, V, Harlan-Williams, L., M, Jensen, R., A. 2012. BRCA1 and HSP90 cooperate in homologous and non-homologous DNA double-strand-break repair and G2/M checkpoint activation.. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109 (34), 13650-5
• Dandawate, P, Subramaniam, D, Panovich, P, Standing, D, Krishnamachary, B, Kaushik, G, Thomas, S., M, Dhar, A, Weir, S., J, Jensen, R., A, Anant, S. 2020. Cucurbitacin B and I inhibits colon cancer growth by targeting the Notch signaling pathway.. Scientific reports, 10 (1), 1290
• Dandawate, P, Kaushik, G, Ghosh, C, Standing, D, Ali Sayed, A., A, Choudhury, S, Subramaniam, D, Manzardo, A, Banerjee, T, Santra, S, Ramamoorthy, P, Butler, M, Padhye, S., B, Baranda, J, Kasi, A, Sun, W, Tawfik, O, Coppola, D, Malafa, M, Umar, S, Soares, M., J, Saha, S, Weir, S., J, Dhar, A, Jensen, R., A, Thomas, S., M, Anant, S. 2020. Diphenylbutylpiperidine Antipsychotic Drugs Inhibit Prolactin Receptor Signaling to Reduce Growth of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma in Mice.. Gastroenterology, 158 (5), 1433-1449.e27
• Pollack, S, Igo, Jr, R., P, Jensen, R., A, Christiansen, M, Li , X, Cheng, C., Y, Ng MCY, Smith, A., V, Rossin, E., J, Segrè, A., V, Davoudi, S, Tan, G., S, Ida Chen, Y., D, Kuo, J., Z, Dimitrov, L., M, Stanwyck, L., K, Meng, W, Hosseini, S., M, Imamura, M, Nousome, D, Kim, J, Hai, Y, Jia, Y, Ahn, J, Leong, A, Shah, K, Park, K., H, Guo, X, Ipp, E, Taylor, K., D, Adler, S., G, Sedor, J., R, Freedman, B., I, Lee, I., T, Sheu, W., H, Kubo, M, Takahashi, A, Hadjadj, S, Marre, M, Tregouet, D., A, Mckean-Cowdin, R, Varma, R, McCarthy, M., I, Groop, L, Ahlqvist, E, Lyssenko, V, Agardh, E, Morris, A, Doney ASF, Colhoun, H., M, Toppila, I, Sandholm, N, Groop, P., H, Maeda, S, Hanis, C., L, Penman, A, Chen, C., J, Hancock, H, Mitchell, P, Craig, J., E, Chew, E., Y, Paterson, A., D, Grassi, M., A, Palmer, C, Bowden, D., W, Yaspan, B., L, Siscovick, D, Cotch, M., F, Wang, J., J, Burdon, K., P, Wong, T., Y, Klein BEK, Klein, R, Rotter, J., I, Iyengar, S., K, Price, A., L, Sobrin, L. 2020. Erratum. Multiethnic Genome-Wide Association Study of Diabetic Retinopathy Using Liability Threshold Modeling of Duration of Diabetes and Glycemic Control. Diabetes 2019;68:441-456.. Diabetes, 69 (6), 1306
• Jensen RAA, Thomsen, D., K, Bliksted, V., F, Ladegaard, N. 2020. Narrative Identity in Psychopathology: A Negative Past and a Bright but Foreshortened Future.. Psychiatry research, 290, 113103
• Mudaranthakam, D., P, Harlan-Williams, L., M, Jensen, R., A, Kuo, H, Garimella, V, Chen, R., C, Mayo, M., S, Krebill, H. 2020. OPTIK: a database for understanding catchment areas to guide mobilization of cancer center assets.. Database : the journal of biological databases and curation, 2020
• Li , D, Harlan-Williams, L., M, Kumaraswamy, E, Jensen, R., A. 2019. BRCA1-No Matter How You Splice It.. Cancer research, 79 (9), 2091-2098
• Pollack, S, Igo, Jr, R., P, Jensen, R., A, Christiansen, M, Li , X, Cheng, C., Y, Ng MCY, Smith, A., V, Rossin, E., J, Segrè, A., V, Davoudi, S, Tan, G., S, Ida Chen, Y., D, Kuo, J., Z, Dimitrov, L., M, Stanwyck, L., K, Meng, W, Hosseini, S., M, Imamura, M, Nousome, D, Kim, J, Hai, Y, Jia, Y, Ahn, J, Leong, A, Shah, K, Park, K., H, Guo, X, Ipp, E, Taylor, K., D, Adler, S., G, Sedor, J., R, Freedman, B., I, Lee, I., T, Sheu, W., H, Kubo, M, Takahashi, A, Hadjadj, S, Marre, M, Tregouet, D., A, Mckean-Cowdin, R, Varma, R, McCarthy, M., I, Groop, L, Ahlqvist, E, Lyssenko, V, Agardh, E, Morris, A, Doney ASF, Colhoun, H., M, Toppila, I, Sandholm, N, Groop, P., H, Maeda, S, Hanis, C., L, Penman, A, Chen, C., J, Hancock, H, Mitchell, P, Craig, J., E, Chew, E., Y, Paterson, A., D, Grassi, M., A, Palmer, C, Bowden, D., W, Yaspan, B., L, Siscovick, D, Cotch, M., F, Wang, J., J, Burdon, K., P, Wong, T., Y, Klein BEK, Klein, R, Rotter, J., I, Iyengar, S., K, Price, A., L, Sobrin, L. 2020. Erratum. Multiethnic Genome-Wide Association Study of Diabetic Retinopathy Using Liability Threshold Modeling of Duration of Diabetes and Glycemic Control. Diabetes 2019;68:441-456.. Diabetes, 69 (6), 1306
• Vekaria, P., H, Kumar, A, Subramaniam, D, Dunavin, N, Vallurupalli, A, Schoenen, F, Ganguly, S, Anant, S, McGuirk, J., P, Jensen, R., A, Rao, R. 2019. Functional cooperativity of p97 and histone deacetylase 6 in mediating DNA repair in mantle cell lymphoma cells.. Leukemia, 33 (7), 1675-1686