Sophia Apple, M.D., is the chief of breast pathology and director of the Cytopathology Program at the University of California at Los Angeles Medical Center. A member of the pathology faculty at UCLA, she is a coauthor of a textbook, Breast Imaging: Expert Radiology Series, published by Elsevier Publishing in 2011.
Apple conducts research into factors associated with the development of breast cancer and investigates breast cancer biomarkers. She currently serves on the editorial board of five medical journals, and is editor-in-chief of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine–Open Journal. She speaks nationally and internationally on the topic of breast pathology, and her clinical consultations are widely praised for their clinical insights and diagnostic acumen.
Apple contracted polio when she was just two years old and living in her homeland of Korea. Still, she doesn’t regret the effects left from the disease and is, in fact, rather thankful for them. She says she was driven to become a doctor because of her disability and dreamed of one day becoming a rehabilitation physician to help those much like herself. But after being introduced to the subject of pathology in her second year of medical school, everything changed. She was instantly drawn to this particular practice of medicine because it fulfilled her insatiable desire to learn.
“To me, pathology is the brain of medicine,” Apple said. “I have a deep interest in investigative knowledge, and (in pathology) I learn new things every single day.”