Officials at the National Institutes of Health are taking a closer look at the role that breast density plays in the development of breast cancer.
As part of the agency’s Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Program (BCERP), grant-funded researchers are being tasked with expanding the study of risk factors that precede breast cancer such as breast density. They will also include more racially and ethnically diverse populations in their studies.
Dr. Cecil Fox/National Cancer Institute
The research will be conducted at six centers: Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston; City of Hope/Beckman Research Institute, Duarte, Calif.; Columbia University, New York; Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Washington; Michigan State University, Lansing; University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The research will be coordinated by another center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Breast density is a new area of focus for the NIH. The researchers will consider dense breast tissue as a possible intermediate risk factor for breast cancer with the goal of identifying links between environmental exposures and high breast density, which could provide future prevention strategies.
“These priorities reflect our continued commitment to breast cancer prevention,” Caroline H. Dilworth, Ph.D., BCERP program lead at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said in a statement. “Our goal is to build on the high-quality science we’ve been funding for more than a decade, while also being responsive to the expert recommendations of the Interagency Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Coordinating Committee] report.”
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