Epigenetics and Breast Cancer Risk - #43

You are born with your genes and those don't change. How you choose to live your life does impact your gene expression. Eating an unhealthy diet, not getting enough sleep, being chronically stressed, and not exercising are lifestyle factors that influence our risk of developing breast cancer. Outside of living an unhealthy lifestyle, women must look at their hormone levels as they age. About 90% of the women that I have had the honor to work with have never had a conversation with their OBGYN about hormone replacement therapy, or bio-identical hormone replacement therapy, and about 50% of them have never had their sex hormone lab panel taken.

As we age, our hormone levels drop. Ancestrally, we didn’t live this long. Now we are. When our hormone levels drop, our risk for certain chronic illnesses increases exponentially, such as breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s. Women my mother's age went through menopause in the 1990s when the Women’s Health Initiative study was going on. I’ve done podcasts on this topic before so I’m not going to deep dive into it here. The trial was stopped early, the study was flawed, and the false findings scared the bejesus out of women and doctors, leaving a multi-decades-long fear cast over women’s health, hormones, and breast cancer risk.

Today my guest is Dr. Vered Stearns, Director, Women’s Malignancies Disease Group

Medical Director, Under Armour Breast Health Innovation Center

Professor of Oncology

Breast Cancer Research Chair in Oncology

Assistant Director for Faculty Affairs

Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center

Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Dr. Stearns’s long-term research goal is to improve current therapies by individualizing strategies for the treatment and prevention of breast cancer. Her main research includes the utilization of biomarkers to predict response to standard regimens used to treat and prevent breast cancer and to introduce new interventions. Dr. Stearns and colleagues were the first to evaluate the role of genetic variants in candidate genes such as CYP2D6 in tamoxifen metabolism, safety, and efficacy. The work has been extended to evaluate the role of genetic variants in aromatase inhibitor-associated outcomes. She has also conducted clinical investigations of epigenetic modifying agents across the breast cancer continuum. Having demonstrated that methylation markers predict breast cancer risk, she is evaluating whether natural compounds can reverse these modifications.

Dr. Stearns has received numerous grants and awards to fund her innovative research. She was a recipient of a Clinical Research Training Grant from the American Cancer Society, an inaugural recipient of the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s Advanced Clinical Research Award, served as a Board Member of the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers (NAPBC) for the American College of Surgeons (ACS), was elected in 2020 as Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and was selected by Forbes as one of 27 top breast cancer oncologists in the United States.

Medical Disclaimer:

By listening to this podcast, you agree not to use this podcast as medical advice or for making any lifestyle changes to treat any medical condition in either yourself or others. Consult your own physician for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any of my guests on my podcast.

You can find Dr. Stearns here:

Kimmel cancer center:

FB: @Johns.Hopkins.Medicine

IG: h@HopkinsMedicine