Dr. Andrew Berchuck Gynecologic Oncologist

Early on, my goal in life was to play for the New York Yankees. As it became apparent that was not going to happen, I had to come up with a realistic plan.

Growing up, our family physician lived nearby, and my father really respected him, so I had this vision of a physician as being very smart and capable and doing good.

My college girlfriend’s dad (she’s now my wife) was a hematologist/oncologist. He was also a positive role model. During medical school, he took me on rounds, so I was exposed to oncology early on. My mother actually died of breast cancer when I was in medical school. I saw everything she went through, and I learned more about cancer and cancer treatment than most people at that stage of life.

My specialty is gynecologic oncology – treating patients with ovarian, uterine, and cervical cancer.

I did a clinical fellowship at Sloan Kettering and a research fellowship at the University of Texas Southwestern. I came to Duke in 1987 to take care of patients and develop a laboratory research program.

Most days, I get to Duke around 7 a.m. When my kids were younger, I used to try to get home for dinner by 6:30 or 7 p.m. Now our oldest son has graduated from Duke and our second son is pre-med at Duke. Our youngest, a high school freshman, often has activities in the evenings, so two or three days a week I’ll stay in the office until about eight, and then pick him up on the way home.

Tuesday is my main surgery day, so I’m in the operating room most of the day. Between cases, I see my hospitalized patients and discuss issues with Nurse Clinician Charlotte Gilbert, who follows our patients throughout treatment. Fridays, I’ll typically see 20 to 30 new and continuing patients at the Surgical Oncology Clinic.

Wednesdays and Thursdays are generally research days, although I still see hospitalized patients. One of my main areas of research is looking for genetic susceptibility factors for ovarian cancer. The major advance in the past decade has been the discovery of the genes BRCA 1 and 2, which account for about 10 percent of ovarian cancer. Duke Cancer Center Epidemiologist Joellen Schildkraut, PhD, and I are conducting the North Carolina Ovarian Cancer Study to try to identify other genetic susceptibility factors that might account for smaller risks of one to five percent.

I recently moved into the new Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, where Duke has created an environment that brings together people with diverse expertise to allow us to do some really innovative studies. In the past, we studied a single gene to determine its role in causing cancer, and the behavior and treatment of cancers. Now we can put 20,000 or 30,000 genes on a small chip. We can take a sample of a cancer and study what’s going on with thousands of genes, all at once. This gives us a portrait of the entire cancer, so we can better predict outcomes and identify viable new targets for cancer therapeutics.

The other thing that takes a chunk of my time is my role as director of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, the largest foundation in the field. This year we will give away more than $4 million in grants. I’m also very involved in the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists. Its role is to educate the professional community and the public about what gynecologic oncologists do, as well as early warning signs for ovarian cancer.

I don’t have enough time to do everything I want to do. I want to be the best surgeon, the most productive research scientist, the best doctor for my patients. The way I make all those things happen is by building teams. The nurses, fellows, residents, and attending physicians I work with are wonderful at caring for our patients. In the research laboratory, I work closely with other faculty members, technicians, medical students, and fellows.

Early in my career, I had this idealistic vision that I could do good things for patients, and also see science advance in ways that would be clinically useful. And in my 17 years at Duke, I’ve seen that happen. The science has led to new clinical approaches that are saving lives, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg. We’re in a golden age of scientific discovery. We’ve learned more about cancer in the last 20 years than ever before, and the pace of discovery is accelerating. So I’m very optimistic that this basic research will translate into new therapies and improved understanding so we can reduce the incidence up front.