Sir Bruce Anthony John Ponder FMedSci FAACR FRS FRCP (born 25 April 1944) is an English geneticist and cancer researcher.
In the late 1970s Ponder and many others saw the potential to use new methods of linkage analysis using restriction fragment polymorphisms to discover the underlying genes.
[14] Focussing on Multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2[15] he described (with Doug Easton) the genetic patterns of the component cancers,[16] and in 1993 identified ret as the causative gene.
Over the next decade the Consortium coordinated a large international effort which defined the genetic epidemiology of both the BRCA-related and other non-BRCA familial breast and ovarian cancers.
[20][21][19][22] By the mid 1990s it was clear that there were many more small family clusters of breast cancer than would be expected by chance, and most were not due to mutations in BRCA-like genes.
[23] Ponder, with colleagues Pharoah and Easton, showed that these families account for a substantial component of breast cancer, with potential opportunities for prevention.
As more variants were found, Ponder’s group adapted the gene regulatory network approach pioneered by Califano to show how their effects combined to affect cellular processes and increase cancer risk.
[29] In 2001, he was founding co-director with Ron Laskey of the Hutchison/MRC Research Centre, containing a new MRC Cancer Cell Biology Unit.
[29] This began to build collaborations between researchers in Oncology, the Clinical School, Addenbrooke's Hospital, a wide range of Departments across the University of Cambridge, and local biotechnology companies.