Head of PRISM
Rare Cancer Research Foundation
Christine Spencer, PhD, is the Head of PRISM at the Rare Cancer Research Foundation (RCRF). PRISM (Personalized Research and Insights Supporting Medicine for Oncology Patients) is RCRF’s precision research program that helps patients access research-use testing, data generation, and personalized research opportunities to better inform care and advance discovery in rare cancers.
Before joining RCRF, Dr. Spencer served as a staff researcher at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, where she led multi-omic data analysis initiatives and collaborative projects with partners across academia, biotechnology, and the pharmaceutical industry. Her work focused on integrating complex biological and clinical datasets to better understand mechanisms of treatment response and resistance in cancer immunotherapy.
Dr. Spencer earned her PhD in Epidemiology, Human Genetics, and Environmental Sciences, with a concentration in cancer biology and a minor in biostatistics and data science, from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and MD Anderson Cancer Center. Her doctoral research, conducted under the mentorship of Dr. Jennifer Wargo, explored the role of diet and the gut microbiome in influencing patient responses to immunotherapy.
