The Department would like to congratulate Sarah Nyante, PhD, for being awarded intramural investigator’s funding through UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center (LCCC)’s Developmental Funding Program. The program aims to support the development of cancer research led by UNC faculty, as well as to stimulate new applications for extramural funding.
As one of the program’s Tier 2 Pilot Awards for population science, Dr. Nyante’s two-year University Cancer Research Fund award ($140K) runs from January 2018 – December 2019. It supports her research entitled, “Quantitative Imaging Data in a Community-Based Mammography Registry: A Feasibility Study.” In the year ahead, Dr. Nyante will be establishing a protocol to collect digital mammographic images within the Carolina Mammography Registry (CMR). She will use those images to obtain automated quantitative measurements of area-based breast density, which will be compared with radiologist interpretations and clinically-obtained volumetric measures. In the second year of the project, Dr. Nyante will examine the relationship between the various density measures and the likelihood of being recalled after a screening mammogram due to a suspicious abnormality. The overall goals of the study are to establish the mammogram data collection and analysis process, in preparation for collaborations to apply novel radiomic methods to population-based breast imaging research. She is joined in conducting this study by Department faculty Drs. Louise Henderson and Cherie Kuzmiak, as well as the Department’s Informatics Manager Dr. Jay Crawford.
As a CMR Co-Investigator working under the direction of Dr. Henderson, Dr. Nyante’s research interest includes the role of hormonal factors in breast cancer risk and prognosis, mammographic density, and the relationship between mammographic findings and breast cancer prognosis. Past studies include analyses of change in mammographic density as a predictor of breast cancer prognosis; risk factors for rare breast cancer histologic types; the association between mammographic calcifications and breast cancer prognostic characteristics; and histologic and radiologic features of lobular carcinoma in situ.
“This developmental award is a wonderful way for me to initiate a new line of research while developing new collaborations. We will use the results of this study as preliminary data for an NIH proposal investigating breast composition as a potential breast cancer biomarker.”