Dr. Katherine Hoadley (Assistant Professor, Department of Genetics) is the PI of a new R01 grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) titled “P53, DNA repair imbalance, and immune response in breast cancer mortality disparities” (Dr. Melissa Troester, Lead PI).
The project will use an integrative approach to evaluate p53-related DNA repair pathway irregularities in human tumors, measuring both RNA expression and mutational signatures. Then, p53 loss and DNA repair imbalance will be evaluated in relation to immune activation using both RNA and protein-based, spatial assays of immune markers. These analyses will leverage the Carolina Breast Cancer Study (CBCS), a study of 3000 women with breast cancer that oversampled black women (50% black women, n=1500). To better understand the germline determinants of black-white differences in DNA repair, existing genome wide SNP data will be used to identify genetic variants linked with DNA repair imbalance and immune response.