Elizabeth Pavlisko, MD, has been promoted to professor effective Nov. 1, 2024. She is chief of Duke Pulmonary/Thoracic Pathology, and her clinical activities encompass pulmonary/thoracic and cardiovascular pathology, biomarker testing, and autopsy pathology.
In addition to her clinical and research activities, Pavlisko is active in Duke University Hospital’s Clinical Laboratories and currently serves as the medical director of the Division of Anatomic Pathology and Digital Analytics (DAPDA) Laboratory, which includes Histology, Immunohistochemistry, FISH, and Image Analysis.
For the last ten years, Pavlisko's experience and scope of responsibilities have steadily grown. In 2014, she began as the associate director of Immunopathology and in 2018 was named as director of Image Analysis, a laboratory performing fluorescence staining in situ hybridization (FISH) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) biomarker testing, which is used to detect biomarkers in paraffin-embedded cancer cells. In December 2020, Pavlisko was selected as a Duke Clinical Leadership Program (DCLP) Fellow. She was chosen for this program as a faculty member who showed high potential to assume larger leadership roles across DukeHealth.
“Dr. Pavlisko is an outstanding leader, and her contributions and expertise in thoracic pathology are vital to the overall success of our department,” said Victor Roggli, MD, who Pavlisko says has been instrumental in her career.
Her primary research focus has centered on malignant mesothelioma and chronic lung allograft dysfunction (CLAD). She has published over 65 manuscripts and six book chapters, the latter all centered on occupational diseases of the lungs and pleura. Since 2017, Pavlisko has co-chaired the lung steering committee for the Banff Foundation for Allograft Pathology.
“Dr. Pavlisko is an outstanding thoracic pathologist who has become an internationally recognized expert in both lung tumor (particularly mesothelioma) and lung transplant pathology,” said Pathology Senior Vice Chair David Howell, MD, PhD. “Excelling and achieving recognition in two very different areas is a major accomplishment.”
Recently, in September 2024, she worked to successfully orchestrate the lung section of the 2024 Banff Foundation-Paris Institute of Transplantation meeting held in Paris, France. She presented work that she led on optimizing diagnostic alignment amongst lung transplant pathologists, which was published on Oct. 12, 2024, in the Journal for Heart and Lung Transplantation. She also gave a summary of the lung program at the summation session held on the final day of the meeting.
“This is a pivotal time for lung transplant pathology,” said Pavlisko.
In addition to her work with the Banff Foundation, Pavlisko is an active member of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT), where she currently is serving on the program planning committee for the 2025 annual meeting. She is also part of ISHLT working groups charged with updating the working formulation for the diagnosis of lung allograft rejection as well as updating the guidelines for the diagnosis of lung allograft antibody mediated rejection.
In addition to her work in the niche of lung transplantation, Pavlisko is also interested in occupation lung disease. The week of Oct. 21, 2024, she presented “Chronological Trends in the Causation of Lung Cancer: Fiber Analysis of 468 Cases Over Four Decades” at the Monticello III meeting in Charlottesville, Virginia. This meeting focused on the science of elongated mineral particles.