How randomized clinical trials can inform breast cancer prevention strategies, with Dr. Jack Cuzick

Well-designed randomized clinical trials may provide information about prevention strategies and effective treatments for women at risk of, or diagnosed with, breast cancer. A major limitation of clinical trials, however, is that results apply to the trial group as a whole, but not necessarily to each individual woman. That’s because individual responses are influenced by the patient's and the tumor's unique DNA, or genetic profile.

So how might researchers precisely identify risks for individual women based on protein and gene biomarkers to predict outcomes for breast cancer treatment or even prevention? 

Dr. Jack Cuzick is a Director of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine in London. He is also head of the Centre for Cancer Prevention and John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at Queen Mary, University of London. In 2007, he was chosen by Thompson Scientific as one of the 12 hottest researchers in all of science. He was awarded the AACR Cancer Prevention Prize in 2012. He has been a BCRF Investigator since 2011.

As one cancer research site puts his impact best: “Professor Cuzick’s work on breast cancer treatment and prevention has been instrumental in reducing the number of women losing their lives to the disease.”