“I look at the tumor micro environment of black women with breast cancer,” says Yara Abdou, MD, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (above).
“We have enough evidence to show that Black women with breast cancer have a different tumor biology, therefore they might have different biomarkers of response and a different response altogether.
What I’ve found so far is that they have more T cells in their microenvironment, suggesting that they have a more inflamed tumor microenvironment.
So, I’m wondering whether this translates into responding better to immunotherapy. We really don’t have the answer for that because Black women are under-recruited in all the immunotherapy trials.
My focus is to look at the tumor microenvironment closely and maybe translate that into therapy by promoting a clinical trial that looks at immunotherapy in black women with breast cancer. I’m still developing the clinical trial. It’s still early on, but hopefully we’ll have something towards the end of next year.
A 2-minute video from the Video Journal of Oncology (December 14, 2021)
