According to a study led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, diagnoses of breast cancer have increased steadily in women under age 50 over the past two decades, with steeper increases in more recent years. Studying such trends may offer clues to possible prevention strategies.
Adetunji T. Toriola, MD, PhD, MPH, received the 2022 AACR Outstanding Investigator Award for Breast Cancer Research, supported by the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. This award was established to honor an investigator whose novel and significant work has had or may have a far-reaching impact on the etiology, detection, diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of breast cancer. Such work may involve any discipline across the continuum of biomedical research, including basic, translational, clinical, and epidemiological studies.
Adetunji T. Toriola, MD, PhD, a professor of surgery in the Division of Public Health Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been named a William H. Danforth Washington University Physician Scholar. He is the second physician-researcher named as part of the School of Medicine’s new Physician-Scientist Investigators Initiative, which supports pioneering physician-scientists whose work already has transformed their fields”.
A new $3 million grant — from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — is supporting a phase 2 clinical trial to investigate an osteoporosis drug for its potential to lower breast density in women with dense breasts. Women with dense breasts have four- to six-times higher risk of developing breast cancer than women with lower breast density. The average woman has a one in eight chance of developing breast cancer over an 80-year life span.
“It is estimated that two of every 10 cancers are due to environmental causes, according to Toriola. More than 100 environmental factors have been classified capable of causing cancer in humans, according to Toriola. Some of the risk factors are well-known, such as radiation exposure from CT scans, asbestos and industrial solvents like benzene, according to Hu. “While some of these factors have a predilection for causing cancer in specific sites, others may affect more than one site,” Toriola says. He singles out arsenic (found in wood preservatives and pesticides), which is associated with an increased risk of skin, lung, bladder and kidney cancers; and cadmium (found in metal coatings and some plastics), which appears to be associated with lung cancer.”