Certain types of benign breast lesions are associated with a high risk of future breast cancer development, but current clinical methods to estimate the level of an individual patient’s risk are inaccurate. With a new one-year, $25,000 Badger Challenge Award, Division of Surgical Oncology Assistant Professor Anna Beck, MD, hopes to enhance the ability to determine which patients are at the greatest breast cancer risk.
“Lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS) is a type of benign breast lesion that is associated with a greater than 20% lifetime risk of developing breast cancer, and we are seeing more and more patients who have LCIS,” explained Beck. “But because we currently can’t predict which of these patients are most likely to develop breast cancer, it’s hard to counsel them on risk-reducing medications, many of which have side effects.”
Newer risk prediction models have been developed that look at the impact of an individual’s genetic predisposition and chronic exposure to stress on the risk of developing disease, but these models have not yet been applied to LCIS. Beck and her team will be using existing data from the nationwide All of Us research program and the UK Biobank to assess the ability of these models to predict who with LCIS has the highest risk of developing breast cancer. Co-investigators and collaborators on the project include fellow Division of Surgical Oncology faculty members Dr. Nicci Owusu-Brackett, Dr. Lee Wilke, and Dr. Muhammed Murtaza.
“My goal is to identify a model that can accurately predict those with LCIS who are at highest risk of future breast cancer development so we can then design clinical trials that target risk-reducing strategies in these individuals,” said Beck. “I’m incredibly grateful to the Badger Challenge program for supporting this research.”