Jaydutt Vadgama, PHD, Charles Drew University of Medicince and Science, HBCU/MI Partnership Training Award:

This particular research looks at the problem of what's called tumor subtypes and how different tumors with a different so-called biology may perhaps affect the outcome of cancers in minority populations. So what is known and is well established that African American women, if you look at the data for instance of the African American women, even though the incidents of invasive breast cancers are lower compared to Caucasian women, unfortunately the outcome from cancer in African American women is poorer at almost every single age group that we have looked at. It has been known that a lot of the past, and this is true, that much of the so-called disparities in outcome is due to access to care. However, there's also studies which have shown that even when you correct for access to care there are still differences in terms of outcome. So to that end, we and others have shown that African American's (and now we are also seeing that Latino women - younger Latino women) also seem to have one subtype of tumor called a triple negative tumor. And, these tumors are usually a little bit more aggressive and have poorer outcome.

It seems that more African American women seem to express the triple negative tumors compared to the Caucasian population. So we are trying to understand if that's the case what can we do. If we can understand the occurrence of the triple negative tumor, the biology of the triple negative tumors, then how can we perhaps eventually create better treatments for those kinds of tumors.

This is a partnership program with its called HBCU which is Historically Black Colleges and Universities in partnership with a Majority Institution. This is a partnership between Charles Drew and the UCLA School of Medicine and the Cancer Center. And the partnership is created in order to help build an infrastructure for cancer research, education, training and treatment at the minority institution.

The DOD is extremely important because it helps us to think of innovative ways to look at the surgeon, to look at science, and to look at the kinds of focus that we have, which is somewhat different than other funding agencies. So the ability to do innovative work, the kind of resources, the partnership with our colleagues such as Dr. Slamon -- Dennis Slamon is our co-PI on this particular project -- so those kinds of access to well-renowned investigators in addition to the resources the DOD has provided us has made a significant difference.