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Focus on William Gillanders, MD

William Gillanders, MD, is a professor in the Department of Surgery. His areas of specialties include breast surgery for benign disorders, breast and thyroid cancer and surgical endocrinology.

Dr. Gillanders sees patients at the Breast Health Center, Center for Advanced Medicine, 4921 Parkview Place, 5th floor, Suite F.

FOR AN APPOINTMENT, PLEASE CALL 314 362-2280.

How did you choose breast and endocrine surgery as your specialties?

When I started my surgical residency, I never thought I would end up specializing in breast and endocrine surgery. But I found I really liked doing both types of surgeries – it’s a good mix.

I think it’s very important to have compassionate physicians to take care of women with breast cancer. In addition, surgery is extremely effective therapy for the treatment of breast cancer and it’s very satisfying to be able to offer women an option that is so well-tolerated.

Endocrine surgery involves the thyroid and parathyroid and is a nice complement to breast surgery. It can be a bit more technically challenging than breast cancer surgery, but it is also very effective treatment for thyroid disease or thyroid cancer.

Two of my mentors during my surgical training were Dr. Timothy Eberlein and Dr. Jeffrey Moley, They are fantastic surgeons with specialties in breast and endocrine surgery and I enjoyed working with them.
Dr. Gillanders and family


What brought you to Washington University?

After finishing medical school at Duke University, I came to Washington University for my residency. I had never been to the Midwest and I wanted to go somewhere new. It seemed like a fantastic program. After my residency, my first faculty position was at the Medical University of South Carolina –a very good institution. Ultimately, I decided to come back to Washington University. My wife is from St. Louis, so in addition to being a great professional opportunity for me, it was nice to be able to come home for her.

From a clinical perspective, it was an opportunity to work with leaders in the field because there had been a real emphasis on breast cancer treatment with the Siteman Cancer Center’s recruitment of Dr. Matthew Ellis, Dr. Graham Colditz and Dr. Eberlein. Also, from the research perspective, it was a chance for me to work with other scientists who are studying breast cancer.

Which aspect of your practice is most interesting?

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, but no two breast cancer patients are quite the same. We have to take into account all the clinical features of the patient (medical history and biology of the tumor) to come up with a treatment plan that is most appropriate and suitable. It’s very interesting, because for each patient, the disease is just a little bit different and that impacts how we plan the treatments.

Are there any developments in your field that you are excited about?

My area of research is immunology, and one thing that we are working on is the interplay between the immune system and breast cancer. I’m personally excited about the development of several different breast cancer vaccines. It has been a goal for many years to try to design tumor vaccines and specifically, breast cancer vaccines. I would say that in the last decade we’ve made a huge amount of progress towards that goal. We have a much better understanding of the immune system, how and why vaccines work and when it would be most appropriate to use them.

We have several breast cancer vaccines in the pipeline for clinical trial. It’s very promising that someday we might be able to use breast cancer vaccines as an adjunct to some of the other treatment modalities that are already in use.

The current vaccines are being used in trial for patients who are already diagnosed with breast cancer. In the future, we might be able to use the vaccines to prevent breast cancer. We’re not quite there yet, but certainly, that is one of the long-term goals of developing a vaccine. So, a woman who is identified to be high risk for developing breast cancer might be a potential candidate for the vaccine. That’s probably ten years away, but it’s one of the goals we are working towards.

You’re not from St. Louis, so where are you from?

I was born in New York, but when I was a young child our family moved to Fairfax, Virginia -- which is a suburb of Washington, DC.

There’s been so much growth in the suburbs of Washington, DC and northern Virginia that it’s hard to recognize when I go back to visit. One of the great things about living here is that I can ride my bike to work – St. Louis is a pretty convenient place to live.

Is there a particular award or achievement that is most gratifying?

When I was a junior faculty member at the Medical University of South Carolina, I was the recipient of a research career award from the National Cancer Institute. Since I’ve been here, we received a clinical translational research award from the Department of Defense breast cancer research program to fund our work on this breast cancer vaccine. That’s probably the most significant award that I’ve received.

What is the best advice you’ve received?

The best advice I’ve received was when I was younger – just be yourself, do the things that you want to do, be the person that you want to be and don’t worry about what other people think.

Also, another good piece of advice was to try to achieve excellence in whatever you are doing --even if it doesn’t seemed to be tied into your career plan.
 
If you weren’t a doctor, what would you like to be doing?

I’m pretty happy doing what I’m doing, but if I had to choose something else, I’d like to be doing something outdoors. I might have a business as a tour guide or an outfitter. I think I would enjoy something like that for a couple months, but I’m not sure that it would have the same long-term reward and challenges that being a physician has.

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