Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Baltimore, Maryland
Professor of Epidemiology and Oncology Director of Clinical Cancer Genetics and Prevention Service Member of Women’s Malignancy Program Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center
Employing new technologies to investigate statin drugs and breast cancer survival.
Breast cancer is the number one cancer diagnosed among women worldwide and therefore a global public health problem. Even in developed nations such as the U.S., women with early-stage breast cancer face a substantial risk of recurrence and death. Multiple pre-clinical studies have shown that statins, drugs commonly used to treat high cholesterol, can have multiple anti-tumor effects. These findings are supported by epidemiological studies that have observed a decrease in breast cancer recurrence and an improvement in survival among women with early-stage breast cancer taking statins. The use of statins to improve survival in women with early-stage breast cancer is appealing given that they are already in widespread use, affordable, and well tolerated. Dr. Visvanathan is investigating the biological pathways that mediate the positive impact of statins on breast cancer. Her results may pave the way for evaluating statin use in future clinical trials.
Dr. Visvanathan will capitalize on the fact that statins have multiple anti-tumor effects and delve into how they exert their positive impact on breast cancer. Her team will explore the biological pathways involved by utilizing novel technologies to measure changes in genes, proteins, and metabolites. They hope to identify biomarkers that can be used to identify women with early-stage breast cancer that are likely to benefit from the use of statins in addition to standard treatments.
Kala Visvanathan is a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Department of Medical Oncology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Visvanathan is Director the Clinical Cancer Genetics and Prevention Service and the Cancer Epidemiology Track at Johns Hopkins.
She received her medical degree from the University of Sydney in Australia. She subsequently went on to complete her training in Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, an academic teaching hospital of the University of Sydney in Australia and at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center Johns Hopkins School of Mediine. Dr. Visvanathan also completed training in clinical/cancer epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Her research is focused on primary and secondary prevention of breast and ovarian cancer. Trained as a medical oncologist and cancer epidemiologist, a large part of her research is transdisciplinary and focused on translating results from the laboratory to populations, to identify at risk groups, preventable targets and to evaluate agents that have the potential to impact the natural history of breast and ovarian cancer. She conducts both observational studies and clinical prevention/early detection studies Specific exposures of interest include hormonal exposures, inflammation, genetic and epigenetic changes, DNA damage/repair, obesity and oxidative damage. She has recently co-chaired the American Society of Clinical Oncology national guideline on breast cancer risk reduction.
2004
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