Prof. Dr. Hulya Yazici has been working on Cancer Genetics since 1986. She has won two different international scholarships, NATO Collaborative Grants in 1998 and AACR-AVON Fondation in 2005, and conducted research on different cancers, especially breast / ovarian cancer, in Canada for two years and in the United States for two years, respectively.
Mrs. Yazici is a successful scientist who transferred these experiences to her country which she had gained from abroad, also has initiated cancer studies at the molecular level in Turkey and was the first to adapt molecular level genetic tests to the clinic in the field of oncology.
In 2008, she led the establishment of the “Cancer Genetics Polyclinic” within the body of the Oncology Institute of Istanbul University for the first time in Turkey and she has made valuable contributions for reducing the risk of cancer in the next generation and protecting people from cancer by genetic testing of high-risk families and determining the cancer risk in these families. Mrs. Yazici still has been working in the same field.
Yazici, who was the head of the Department of Cancer Genetics at Istanbul University, Oncology Institute between 2010-2021, served the whole country for many years with the widest range of tests within the body of the “Cancer Genetics Polyclinic”. She is also still continuing her services in this direction at the “Germline Genetics Genetic Counseling Center”, of which she is the founder.
Yazıcı conducted the first and most comprehensive research on the Turkish population, especially on breast and ovarian cancer, and received numerous awards from different institutions for these studies. In additionaly, Mrs.Yazici, who has many international awards and scientific articles, has developed an algorithm that determines the negativity of patients in terms of BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations without genetic testing during her scientific studies and patented this algorithm.
Mrs. Yazici, who has been working in the field of “Cancer Genetics” for 35 years, has brought young scientists to her country by training 24 graduate and doctorate students in cancer genetics as of 2021.