Offit was born in New York City on February 19, 1955, to Dr. Avodah K. Offit (née Komito), a psychiatrist, and Sidney Offit, an author.[13] Offit attended the Browning School and then Princeton University, where he was chairman of the campus humor magazine, Tiger Magazine.[14] He graduating magna cum laude in 1977 and joined the University Board of Trustees as a young alumni trustee.[13] In this capacity, he worked closely with President William G. Bowen on issues pertaining to Princeton's residential system.[15] In 1979, Offit voted to endorse the proposals of the Committee on Undergraduate Residential Life (CURL) that would become the basis for Princeton's current residential college system.[16] Offit and other trustees would further propose that residential colleges be expanded to include upperclassmen who had not joined a selective eating club—a reform that, with some modification, would be adopted decades later.[15]
In 1992, Offit founded one of the world's first clinical cancer genetics services.[11] In 1996, after the discovery of the BRCA2 gene, he and his research group successfully identified the most common mutation on the gene associated with breast and ovarian cancer among individuals of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.[4][19][20][21][22] Offit would also lead the first American Society of Clinical Oncology policy statement following the identification of BRCA1 and BRCA2.[11] In 1997, he wrote Clinical Cancer Genetics: Risk Counseling and Management, which received an award in Medical Sciences from the Association of American Publishers.[23]
In 2002, Offit and his clinical team published the first prospective study establishing the role of risk-reducing ovarian surgery in women carrying BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations.[24][25] They would go on to discover or describe recurrent mutations causing increased risk for colon and prostate cancer, and, in 2013 and 2015, they described two genetic syndromes of inherited childhood lymphoblastic leukemia.[26]
In 2018, Offit joined Beth Karlan, Judy Garber, Susan Domchek, and other physicians to launch the BRCA Founder Outreach Study (BFOR). BFOR provided free testing for three mutations for all insured people over the age of 25 with at least one grandparent of Ashkenazi heritage.[27] Offit called BFOR "a model for the future of genetic testing in health care"—one that would, in contrast to direct-to-consumer genetics testing, allow participants to receive results from their primary care provider.[28]
