Lenora Loo
University of Hawaii at Manoa, HI·Public Health & Epidemiology
Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is the earliest stage of breast cancer. In DCIS, overgrowing cells stay inside the milk ducts, and it accounts for about one in five new breast cancer diagnoses in the U.S.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Genetics
- Topics
ductal carcinoma in situ
breast cancer
cancer progression
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2031
What they work on
- Identify lifestyle, sociodemographic and clinical predictors of DCIS (stage 0 breast cancer) progressing to invasive cancer in AANHPI women, using exposure data from the Multiethnic Cohort and Hawaii Tumor Registry.
- Identify molecular features of DCIS tumors that predict progression versus non-progression, including features specific to Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander patients, using registry biospecimens.
- Uncover tumor mechanisms of progression by comparing paired DCIS and later invasive breast tumors taken from the same individual.
More about the research
Fewer than half of DCIS patients go on to develop invasive cancer. Doctors therefore face a hard choice: which patients need aggressive treatment, and which have a harmless tumor and risk overtreatment? The risk also differs by race and ethnicity. The team has previously reported that Native Hawaiian, Filipino and Japanese DCIS patients are more likely than White patients to develop a later invasive cancer in the same breast. Their preliminary work has also found lifestyle and sociodemographic risk factors and tumor marker differences in these groups.
Why it matters
Better tools to predict which DCIS tumors will turn invasive could help doctors avoid both under- and over-treating women with early breast cancer. The work focuses on Native Hawaiian, Filipino, Japanese and other Asian American and Pacific Islander women, who face higher progression risk and are rarely studied. Identifying their social and tumor risk factors could support more precise, equitable care.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Moon Chen
University of California-Davis, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Administer internal pilot projects within the University of California-UT Southwestern Diversity Patient-Derived Xenograft Development and Trial Center, focused on gastric and lung tumor models from Latino, African American, and Asian American/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander patients.
Corrie Miller
University of Hawaii at Manoa, HI·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether women who deliver preterm have more Lactobacillus iners or anaerobic bacteria in mid-pregnancy vaginal swabs, using 16S sequencing to identify bacteria and to assign community state types (common bacterial patterns).
Julio Aguirre-Ghiso
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Map the transcriptional and chromatin programs controlled by ZFP281, a gene-regulating protein, in early disseminated breast cancer cells and in human DCIS samples, and test how they drive both dissemination and dormancy in mouse models.
The school
University of Hawaii at Manoa: 23 labs on PI Pages, $376M a year on research, 182 research doctorates a year.
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