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Title: “Improving Health Outcomes for Women of African
Ancestry Using Precision Medicine”
Author: Alexzander A. A.
Asea, PhD, MBA
Professor of Medicine & Director, Precision Therapeutics
Proteogenomics Diagnostics Center
University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences
It is a very shocking fact that despite lower incidence and
the steady improvement in screening, African-American women
are more likely to die of breast cancer than Caucasian
women. There are many reasons one can point to, one very
important reason is triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).
Although TNBC accounts for only 15 percent of all types of
breast cancer, it is found in much higher percentages in
premenopausal African-American women. Unlike other forms of
breast cancer, TNBC is very aggressive, grows very fast in
the breast pad, rapidly metastasizes to other organs and in
most cases, is resistant to chemotherapy.
Recent research reveals that the degree of African ancestry
correlates with increasing frequency of TNBC. It is now well
accepted that women of African ancestry presenting with TNBC
are more likely to have late stage, aggressive, rapidly
growing, and less hormone-responsive breast tumors compared
to TNBC found in other women. Unfortunately, the reason is
still unknown. This creates a very important problem,
because, without this knowledge, African-American women with
TNBC cannot benefit from current chemotherapeutic drugs that
have shown great promise for other women with TNBC.
For the past 15-years, my lab has been working on finding
this reason. We have combined the latest biomedical
technologies, including, multi-omics (metabolomics,
proteomics, genomics, transcriptomics), personalized
medicine (breast cancer patient’s clinical data before
and after chemotherapy treatment), microbiome (tumor
and gut) and artificial intelligence (Machine
Learning/Big Data Applications).
“Knowledge is power”, so please join us at
5:30 p.m. on February 25 in Health Education Building Room
105 on The University of Toledo Health Science Campus, for
an exciting, interactive panel discussion entitled “Honing
in on Triple-Negative Breast Cancer: Improving Health
Outcomes” and hear from Community Leaders, Breast Cancer
Survivors, Researchers, Students and Faculty about how to
combat this terrible disease - come with lots of questions.
Free parking in front of the Health Education Building.
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