City of Hope Duarte, California
Assistant Professor, Division of Breast Surgery, Department of Surgery and Division of Health Equities, Department of Population Sciences
Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation
Understanding the biological factors that contribute to drug resistance in Black women with breast cancer.
Anti-estrogen therapy, also known as endocrine therapy, has dramatically improved outcomes in estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer, the most diagnosed form of the disease, but not uniformly in all racial groups. Despite the use of endocrine therapy, however, Black women still die at a disproportionately higher rate from ER-positive breast cancer. Research by Dr. Jones has confirmed that Black women have a different reaction to endocrine therapy. She has identified a gene named UBE2C, which is expressed significantly higher in Black compared to white women, as being associated with worse survival in ER-positive breast cancer.
The African American Breast Cancer Epidemiology and Risk (AMBER) is a consortium of four studies established by the National Cancer Institute pools data and biological samples from Black women with breast cancer The focus of Dr. Jones’s Conquer Cancer research, supported by BCRF, is to use the data provided by the AMBER consortium to characterize the gene expression in tumors of Black women treated with endocrine therapy. This year, Dr. Jones established collaborative partnerships with AMBER Consortium members and designed a tissue collection protocol for City of Hope clinical sites.
In the coming year, she and her team will define the gene expression of specimens from this database and determine a UBE2C-related biomarker of endocrine therapy resistance among Black women. Results from this project will help identify what is contributing to the different reaction to therapy in Black women and define a potential target for drug development.
Veronica Jones, MD, FACS is a breast surgical oncologist at City of Hope in Duarte, CA. She earned her undergraduate degree with honors from Stanford University before receiving her medical doctorate with honors from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, TN. While in medical school, she was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) National Medical Honor Society and traveled to Kenya to complete clerkships in HIV/AIDS and reproductive health. Dr. Jones continued her postdoctoral training at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, TX, with a categorical general surgery internship and residency. At Baylor, Dr. Jones was honored as chief resident of the year. In 2014, she completed a breast surgical oncology fellowship at Emory University in Atlanta, GA before joining the faculty there as an assistant professor. She has been an assistant professor at City of Hope since 2015, with dual appointments in the Department of Surgery, Division of Breast Surgery, and the Department of Population Sciences, Division of Health Equities.
Board-certified in surgery, Dr. Jones is both a practicing clinician and translational researcher. Her overall goal is to mitigate breast cancer morbidity and mortality, especially in Black/African American women who disproportionately die from this disease. Her current research efforts focus on developing targeted therapies for ER-positive breast cancer to not only diminish racial disparities but improve survival for all patients with ER-positive breast cancer. To this end, she performs analyses to further understand the genomic and proteomic drivers of therapy resistance, recurrence, and progression. Additionally, Dr. Jones investigates novel imaging techniques to predict disease initiation and progression. She holds active memberships with several professional societies and is heavily involved in community outreach, speaking frequently at numerous events across Southern California.
2023
The Women's Cancer Research Fund Award
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