Bodour Salhia, PhD
Professor, Interim Chair
Department of Cancer Biology
Royce and Mary Trotter Chair in Cancer Research
Keck School of Medicine
University of Southern California
Seminar Information
Cell free DNA liquid biopsies have transformed the ability to interrogate tumor biology noninvasively, yet most current applications remain focused on somatic mutations and isolated points in the cancer care pathway. DNA methylation provides a complementary and often more informative signal, capturing tissue identity, lineage state, and disease specific biology. These properties enable methylation based liquid biopsies to support cancer management across the full continuum of care.
This seminar will describe how cfDNA methylation profiling can be developed to address unmet needs spanning early cancer detection and diagnostic triage, treatment stratification, and longitudinal monitoring for minimal residual disease and recurrence. Assay and analytical frameworks developed for methylation-based detection in ovarian and breast cancer will be discussed, highlighting plasma only approaches that do not require prior tumor profiling and that perform robustly across heterogeneous disease states.
The talk will also address the path required to translate methylation based liquid biopsies from discovery to clinical use, including assay robustness, scalability, analytical validation, and integration into clinical workflows. Together, these efforts illustrate how cfDNA methylation technologies can deliver reliable and clinically actionable liquid biopsies across the cancer care continuum.
Dr. Bodour Salhia is the Inaugural Interim Chair of the Department of Cancer Biology and the Royce and Mary Trotter Chair in Cancer Research at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC). She also serves as Co-Leader of the Epigenetic Regulation in Cancer Program and Inaugural Director of the Preclinical Models Shared Resource at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Dr. Salhia is a cancer biologist and translational scientist whose research integrates cell biology, cancer genomics, and epigenomics to address clinically unmet needs. Her primary focus is on developing cfDNA methylation-based liquid biopsy tools for early cancer detection and minimal residual disease (MRD) monitoring. Her team developed OvaPrint, a novel cfDNA methylation assay for early detection of ovarian cancer, and MammaTrace, a tumor-naïve liquid biopsy assay for MRD detection in breast cancer. These efforts reflect her broader commitment to precision diagnostics and noninvasive cancer monitoring.
Dr. Salhia earned her B.Sc. (1998), M.H.Sc. (2001), and Ph.D. (2006) from the University of Toronto and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in genomics and epigenomics at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen). She is a fellow of the ELAM (Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine) program and a recipient of the 2024 USC Academic Senate Distinguished Faculty Service Award.
She is also the Founder of CpG Diagnostics, a precision diagnostics company focused on cfDNA methylation-based technologies for women’s cancers. Passionate about community impact, Dr. Salhia founded The Bench with Bedside Initiative, a direct-to-patient research engagement program, and has led outreach efforts both in the U.S. and abroad.