Decreasing Endocrine Disruptor Exposure in Latina Teens

Kim Harley of UC Berkeley and Kimberly Parra of Clinica de Salud del Valle Salinas teamed up to determine whether teens can reduce their body burden of potential breast cancer carcinogens by switching to safer cosmetics. They found a significant drop in chemicals levels when teens switched for as few as three day.

Intranasal Drug Delivery for Brain Metastatic Breast Cancer

Axel Schonthal at the University of Southern California is developing a treatment for breast cancer that metastasizes to the brain. With tax checkoff funding, he produced a compound called TMZ-POH which when delivered through the nose is able to cross the blood-brain barrier and target triple negative breast cancer cells in mice.

Intervening on Reproductive Health in Young Survivors

Irene Su at UC San Diego is conducting research that will inform and address the unmet reproductive health needs of young breast cancer survivors. She is determining whether the Reproductive Health Survivorship Care Plan will improve estrogen deprivation symptoms, fertility concerns, contraceptive practices and sexual function for these women.

Light at Night and Breast Cancer Risk in California Teachers

Peggy Reynolds at the Cancer Prevention Institute of California and her colleagues analyzed satellite imagery data and survey data to determine whether outdoor levels of light at night correlates to breast cancer rates. Their findings suggested that women living in the areas with very high levels of outdoor LAN had about a 10% increased risk of breast cancer compared to women who lived in areas with the lowest levels of indoor LAN.

Measuring Real-world Breast Cancer Outcomes

Allison Kurian at Stanford University investigated how care preference and decision making around emerging treatments compares in academic and community health care settings. She developed the Oncoshare research tool that linked records between the institutions and found that patients treated in two health care systems received much more intensive treatment than others, despite having comparable prognostic factors.

Modulation of Breast Cancer Stem Cell response to Radiation

Frank Pajonk at UCLA found a way to distinguish breast cancer stem cells, which are responsible for tumor resistance to ionizing radiation, from normal breast cancer stem cells and ultimately led to the discovery that ionizing radiation may increase tumor aggressiveness by causing non-breast cancer stem cells to convert to the cancer stem cells.