Powel Brown

Powel Brown, MD, PhD is Professor and Chair of the Department of Clinical Cancer Prevention at MD Anderson Cancer Center and holds the Olga Keith Wiess Distinguished University Professorship. He is one of the world's leading experts in breast cancer chemoprevention, with a career spanning more than three decades dedicated to reducing breast cancer incidence in high-risk women through pharmacological intervention. Dr. Brown has been a principal architect of clinical trials evaluating selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) — including tamoxifen and raloxifene — as well as aromatase inhibitors (exemestane, anastrozole) in premenopausal and postmenopausal high-risk populations. He has led major NCI Breast Cancer Prevention Trials and pioneered "window-of-opportunity" presurgical study designs that allow rapid evaluation of chemopreventive agent bioactivity in high-risk breast tissue, dramatically shortening the drug development timeline for prevention. His laboratory and clinical work have together identified key biomarkers of breast cancer risk and chemoprevention response — including Ki-67 proliferation index, ER/PR expression in normal tissue, and mammographic density — that are now used in precision prevention frameworks. Dr. Brown has authored over 250 peer-reviewed publications and trained scores of prevention researchers through his laboratory and clinical training programs.