Cancer.Net Specialty Editor: MEN1, MEN2, Carney Complex
Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH

Dr. Pauline Funchain specializes in medical oncology of melanoma, high-risk skin cancers, and cancer genetics. She serves as Director of the Melanoma Oncology Program, co-Director of the Comprehensive Melanoma Program, as well as Director of the Genomics Program at the Taussig Cancer Institute of the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Funchain co-chairs the inaugural ASCO Guidelines Panel on Systemic Therapy in

Melanoma and serves on the ASCO Guidelines Panel on Immune Related Adverse Events (irAEs). She developed and leads the first irAE tumor board established in the United States as well as the first clinical irAE medical conference. She conducts translational science research focusing on the genetics and genomics, both germline and somatic, of cancer. Her primary research interests are in the genetics and genomics of melanoma, the practical translation of genomic data into clinical precision oncology, and predictors of clinical outcomes and adverse events related to immunotherapy. She is the lead investigator in the philanthropically backed Gross Family Melanoma Registry, an actively accruing study of familial melanoma.

Dr. Funchain attended Pomona College where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Bioethics. She spent two years researching bacteria mismatch repair genes at UCLA in the laboratory of Dr. Jeffrey H. Miller. She matriculated into the Ohio State College of Medicine, where she received a Medical Doctor degree. During this time, she was a National Cancer Institute awardee in the laboratory of Dr. Christopher Plass for work in the genome-wide epigenetics of CLL, and was a Howard Hughes Medical Institution-National Institute of Health (HHMI-NIH) Cloister Scholar in the laboratory of Dr. Paul Meltzer, researching genome-wide copy changes in breast cancer genomics. She completed rigorous Internal Medicine training at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, and hematology-oncology fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic. She was selected as an Ambrose Monell scholar in Clinical Cancer Genomics in the laboratory of Professor Charis Eng. Dr. Funchain is board certified in medical oncology and holds medical licensure in the state of Ohio.

View current ASCO disclosure here.  

Last updated: October 2021