Multi-Day Cancer Symposium Lays Groundwork for Research Collaboration

An intensive two-day Yale Cancer Research symposium, dedicated to advancing cancer science through innovation and strengthening partnerships between Yale University and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), brought together researchers from multiple disciplines recently.

As part of Yale’s ASCEND Initiative, faculty, oncologists, and cancer researchers from Hampton University, Meharry Medical College, and Tuskegee University came to Yale to join colleagues in giving, and listening to, presentations by members of Yale Cancer Center (YCC) and the Yale Schools of Medicine (YSM), Public Health and Nursing.

The event began with welcome remarks from leaders of Yale medical school, cancer center, and faculty development—Drs. Nancy Brown, Eric P. Winer, and Gary Desir—in which they looked forward to collaborations and long-term partnerships with the visiting scholars and clinicians to advance cancer studies, engagement, networking, and development. Also, each thanked the symposium organizer Faye Rogers, PhD, associate cancer center director of Collaborative Excellence and a YSM professor of therapeutic radiology.

The keynote speaker’s presentation on “oncologic anthropology” set the tone for the symposium, which included more than two dozen talks on various cancer types and what research findings reveal about the impact of biological ancestry as well as environmental and societal effects on cancer incidence and mortality.

“We always have to discuss social determinants of health. No one would dispute the fact that poverty is a key indicator for poor outcomes,” in cancer, said keynote speaker Lisa Newman, MD, MPH, a National Science Academy member, and director, Interdisciplinary Breast Program at New York Presbyterian Weil Cornell Medical Center.

“And we need to look at tumor biology in addition to socio economic conditions,” Newman said, referring to ancestry genetics. As an example, she explained that women with breast cancer had similar mortality rates until the 1980s when the effective cancer therapy tamoxifen was federally approved. Tamoxifen is largely ineffective against triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive cancer found more often in women of west African ancestry, contributing to what is now a wide gap in mortality rates between black and white women with breast cancer.

On that topic, Amadou Gaye, PhD, chair, of Meharry’s department of Integrative Genomics and Epidemiology, shared an analysis of GWAS (Genome-Wide Association Study) data, and his frustrations, in his research “African Ancestry-Specific Functional Variants Associated with Triple-Negative Breast Cancer.”

“Everybody knows the Human Genome Reference [Sequence]…is not representative,” Gaye said, adding that it is hindering biologic research, including his own. “Less than 1% of the data in the GWAS catalog was about African Americans. In the future, what we refer to as precision medicine will rely on data…and we have too many who are under-represented in the data.”

Similarly, Yale School of Public Health professor Michaela Dinan, PhD, an associate cancer center director, also emphasized the critical need for population-level data bases based on biology. Then she shared a novel approach to cancer outcomes research analyzing SEER cancer registry data, physical tumor tissue, and Medicare claims data together.

While recognizing that the data was somewhat “flawed”—most people on Medicare are 65 or older and the tumor tissue samples from Iowa and Hawaii were likely homogenous—it resulted in 130 cases for genomic study using de-identified publicly available data, Dinan said.

Using such methods has “huge potential impact…to study rare cancers or specific portions of the population,” Dinan said.

The 15-minute talks throughout the two days spanned disease-specific topics—prostate, lung, breast, and gastrointestinal cancers—in terms of their basic science and socioeconomic impacts. Each topic featured a mix of three to five experts from Hampton, Meharry, Tuskegee, and Yale.

In a segment on prostate cancer, Tuskegee University’s Stacy Lloyd, PhD, MPH, an assistant professor of pathobiology, spoke in part on scientific findings related to higher mortality rates for African-American men with prostate cancer than white of European ancestry. Prostate cancer outcomes are an exemplar of disparities, Lloyd said, explaining findings that African-American men have a higher ratio of inosine to adenosine in their tumor tissue and urine compared to European American men. Those higher levels have been linked to more aggressive prostate cancer and lower disease-free survival.

Among the first-day presentations, one on gastrointestinal cancers featured five speakers, including three informative talks on gastic, pancreatic and colon cancer. Hampton University’s Mengistu Shukare, PhD, an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry spoke on “Fibroblast-Induced Mitochondrial Reprogramming in Pancreatic Cancer.” Two Tuskegee scientists, Sunila Mahavadi, PhD, associate professor of biology and Temesgen Samuel, PhD, professor of pathobiology, respectively presented on “GPER and Gastric Cancer: Emerging Insights” and “Immunomodulatory Responses to Colon Cancer Chemotherapeutics.”

One of the more sobering talks, on the second day of the symposium, was made by Shaneeta Johnson, MD, MBA, chair of surgery at Meharry Medical College who spoke on “Environmental Determinants and Cancer Surgery: Challenges, Impacts, and Strategies for Resilient Care.” As a surgeon, Johnson’s presentation focused less on lab or data work and more on patients and healthcare.

Of the 10 million cancer-related deaths per year, Johnson estimated that up to 70% were related to environmental or lifestyle factors. Air pollution, heat exposure, living near factories or gas and oil production, are factors as important to study and address, she said, as are others, including physician shortages, healthcare deserts caused by hospital closings, and people without the resources to move from flood and tornado-prone areas.

“The patient on my (operating) table may be more sick because of where they live, what they’ve been exposed to,” Johnson said, linking climate change with surgical frailty in some patients. “Now, I need to think about where (patients) are coming from and what they’ve been exposed and how it impacts the surgery and their recovery.”

The schedule of the Innovation through Collaboration 2025 symposium is here.