Director of the Translational Diagnostics Assay Development
Ventana Medical Systems, USA

With a career dedicated to the discovery of early detection cancer biomarkers and the development of diagnostic assays, Dr Patricia Carrigan currently is the Director of the Translational Diagnostics Assay Development laboratory for Ventana Medical Systems, Inc, a member of the Roche Group. Building consensus with parties on all levels and translating complicated and technical concepts to diverse audiences, Dr. Carrigan now leads two independent teams of scientists in developing robust prototype assays that are used as companion diagnostics for drug enrollment or stratification for clinical trials in the United States and in Europe.

Prior to Ventana, Dr. Carrigan served as the Program Director for the Biospecimen Core Repository at the International Genomic Consortium for the NCI/NHGR1 sponsored Cancer Genome Atlas Project (TCGA). During this time she was responsible for coordinating the receipt of historically collected cancer tissue specimens from universities and hospitals from around the world to be used in high throughput state of the art experiments. Following this position, Dr. Carrigan was an Assistant Professor in the Center For Innovations In Medicine at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. While there she participated in the identification of novel cancer antigens that are currently being tested for the use in a Prophylactic Cancer Vaccine for Breast Cancer.

Through her involvement with the Canary Foundation which solely focuses on the discovery of Early Detection Cancer Biomarkers, Dr. Carrigan serves as an active member of the Canary Foundation Pancreatic Cancer Steering Committee. Dr. Carrigan earned her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biochemisty from the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine.