Team to conduct largest ever study of breast cancer in Blacks

BUFFALO, NY — A multidisciplinary team is coming together in the largest study to date on breast cancer in Black women. The team will investigate why Black women are more likely than those of European descent to be diagnosed with breast cancer at a young age, and with poor prognoses.

Supported by a five-year, $19.3 million award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), scientists from the Slone Epidemiology Center at Bos­ton University (BU), the Univer­sity of North Carolina Lineberger Com­prehensive Cancer Center (UNC) and Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) will conduct the study.

This “team science” effort to better understand a significant health disparity will be led by Co-Principal Investigators Julie Pal­mer, ScD, from BU, Robert Mil­likan, PhD, from UNC’s Line­berger Comprehensive Cancer Center and Christine Ambrosone, PhD, from RPCI.

They will collaborate with a team of researchers in a national study investigating the causes of breast cancer among Black women. For reasons that are not clear, Black women are more likely than women of European descent to be diagnosed before age 45, and are also more likely to be diagnosed with aggressive types of breast cancer that are linked to more deaths.

The study will involve 5,500 Black women from four ongoing studies — the Carolina Breast Cancer Study (CBCS), the Wo­men’s Circle of Health Study (WCHS), the Black Women’s Health Study (BWHS) and the Multiethnic Cohort Study (MEC) — as well as 5,500 controls, or healthy women. Until now, studies on breast cancer in Black women have been hampered by not having a large population to investigate risk factors for specific subtypes of breast cancer and for breast cancer diagnosed at an early age.

The investigation will be the first to develop comprehensive models for contributions of genetic and non-genetic risk factors for breast cancer subtypes in Black women. The collaborators’ goal is to discover genetic, biologic, reproductive and behavioral risks for breast cancer subgroups defined by tumor biology and age at onset of disease.

“We’ve known about these disparities for years, but not what’s causing them,” said Dr. Ambro­sone, Professor of On­co­logy and Chair of the Depart­ment of Cancer Prevention and Control, Division of Cancer Prevention and Popu­la­tions Science, RPCI. “Drs. Milli­kan, Palmer and I are passionate about this work, and we’re joining forces in an effort to identify factors that can ultimately be used to prevent this deadly disease.”

The researchers will apply a multi-faceted approach, investigating genetic susceptibility; reproductive history, lactation, and hormonal factors; body size, early life and adult physical activity; ge­ne/environment interactions; and other risk factors in relation to breast cancer subtypes. Black women under age 45 have a 76 percent five-year survival rate from breast cancer, while young white women have an 88 percent survival rate (statistics for 2001-2007, the most recent period for which data are available).

This article was originally published in the September 5, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper