Lora Hedrick Ellenson

Lora Hedrick Ellenson, M.D., is Professor and Director of Gynecologic Pathology in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. Her undergraduate work was done at the University of California, Berkeley, followed by medical school at Stanford University School of Medicine and residency training at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. Upon completing the Anatomic Pathology program, she joined the laboratory of Drs. Bert Vogelstein and Ken Kinzler as a postdoctoral fellow. She simultaneously trained as a Gynecologic Pathologist with Dr. Robert Kurman. Following her initial work studying the molecular biology of colon cancer, at the request of Dr. Kurman, she joined the Department of Pathology in the Division of Gynecologic Pathology where she established an independent research program to study the molecular genetics of endometrial carcinoma. Dr. Ellenson’s laboratory was one of the first to document the high frequency of TP53 mutations in uterine serous carcinoma and microsatellite instability and PTEN mutations in sporadic endometrioid carcinoma. In 1998, after becoming an Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins, she moved to Weill Cornell Medical College to oversee the Division of Gynecologic Pathology. Reflecting her expansive interests, Dr. Ellenson has, throughout her career, maintained an NIH-funded laboratory and simultaneously practiced diagnostic gynecological pathology. Since 2001, she has been an Associate Editor for The American Journal of Pathology. She has also been on the Editorial Committee for Annual Reviews of Pathology: Mechanisms of Disease for over 10 years. Dr. Ellenson has contributed chapters on the female genital tract for the last three editions of Robbins and Cotran Pathologic Basis of Disease and more recently for Basic Pathology. More recently, she became Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Gynecological Pathology and is on the editorial committee for the next edition of the WHO Classification of Tumours of Female Reproductive Organs.