Back to Conference Homepage
Back to Conference Faculty List
Back to Conference Schedule
Presentation: Breast Cancer Risk Factors in Chinese
Time: Friday Morning
Purpose: To summarize incidence patterns and risk Factors associated with breast cancer in Chinese women.
Objectives:
Describe breast cancer incidence patterns in Chinese Americans and Chinese in Asia.
Describe main lifestyle risk factors associated with breast cancer in Chinese.
Describe those risk factors that are modifiable and those that are less easily modifiable.
Current Positions:
Professor of Preventive Medicine, USC Keck School of Medicine
Bio:
Dr. Anna Wu received her undergraduate degree in physiology at the University of California at Berkeley and her doctoral degree in Public Health (Epidemiology) from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1983. She became Assistant Professor at USC in 1984, Associate Professor in 1994 and Full Professor with Tenure in 2002. Early in her career, she conducted a series of lung cancer studies to determine the role of indoor air pollution from passive smoking, cooking and heating fuels/fumes, and other factors in explaining the high rates of lung cancer in Chinese women when few were active smokers. She continues to have a strong interest in lung cancer research, particularly to better understand hormone-related effects on lung diseases. Dr. Wu’s current research activities are focused in two main areas. One area is devoted to studying the etiology of breast and ovarian cancers. The rationale of these studies is to identify reasons for the traditionally low incidence rates in Asia but steadily increasing rates when Asians migrate to the United States. Since the early 1990s, Dr. Wu conducted a series of observational studies on breast cancer in Asians and in Asian-Americans. Results from these breast cancer studies suggested that certain traditional Asian foods (e.g., soyfoods, green tea) may have contributed, at least in part, to the historically low rates in Asians. Dr. Wu is now further investigating these dietary factors in intervention and mechanistic studies in healthy women as well as breast cancer patients. A second area of Dr. Wu’s current research is cancers of the gastrointestinal tract, including adenocarcinomas of the colon, stomach and esophagus. These studies are aimed at identifying environmental and genetic determinants of these cancers. While most of these studies are aimed at understanding causes of cancers, Dr. Wu is now expanding her work to also identify lifestyle and genetic factors that may influence treatment response and cancer outcome.