Dr. Ostrander's lab at has traditionally worked in the fields of both human and canine genetics. Her lab uses state-of-the-art genomic approaches to identify prostate cancer susceptibility genes in both high-risk families and population-base, case control studies. She has identified alleles that increase risk for metastatic disease and continues to work within two large consortia to identify susceptibility loci. Hers was one of the first labs to describe a role for BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations in women drawn from the general population, revealing epidemiologic features of woman at risk for breast or ovarian cancer.
Dr. Ostrander’s lab is best known, though, for their studies of the domestic dog as a well-phenotyped species with an extensively documented population structure that offers unique opportunities for solving fundamental biological problems. Human selection has differentiated the dog into a staggering variety of breeds, each featuring a narrow, precisely defined set of phenotypes. Recognizing that this combination of diversity and uniformity provides an exceptional opportunity for genetic dissection of biological processes, her lab has applied these advantages to tackling problems in cell and organismal biology, and human disease, which have proven intractable in other model systems.
Dr. Ostrander has published over 375 papers. She has won multiple awards including the American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Award, Burroughs Welcome Award for Functional Genomics, Asa Mays Award, Lifetime Achievement Awards and the 2013 Genetics Society of America Medal. She has also won multiple mentorship awards, was elected a fellow of AAAS in 2013, and was elected to the National Academy of Science in 2019.