Breast cancer is the most common cancer among United States women and its incidence is increasing. Breast cancer is an important public health problem with the actuarial life long risk of breast cancer approximating 1 in 9; it is estimated that 500,000 women will die from breast cancer during the decade of the 1990's. The Kaplan Comprehensive Cancer Center of NYU Medical Center is planning to develop a Breast Cancer Research Program to focus and advance its interdisciplinary research activities on this tumor. Two broad goals for the Program have initially been identified: To establish a broad based organizational infrastructure, building upon the existing scientific interests of the Center, which will allow for the incorporation of multiple disciplines and creative exploration of new approaches to breast cancer. To identify, foster and pursue new specific themes in breast cancer research which complement and expand the Center's basic and clinical scientific strengths. The Center will employ modern molecular biology techniques, new assessments of risk and novel therapeutic approaches for intervention research including prevention, early detection and therapy in the Program. It will capture the existing organizational setting and structure of the Cancer Center to stage a multifaceted approach to breast cancer. Five groups are being formed, each with a leader, the sum of whom will form the Program's Executive Committee to guide its development together with the director. The groups are: Environmental Carcinogenesis, Molecular Epidemiology, Molecular Genetics, Clinical Research, and Early Lesion Pathology. It is expected that the Program over the four years of support of this grant will succeed in attracting a prominent physician scientist in breast cancer as its permanent director; nurture the research of new breast cancer scientists and create needed resources to facilitate a major breast cancer research effort at NYU Medical Center.
