Alexandra Harris, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.S.

Cancer Prevention Fellows, Drs. Alexandra Harris and Brittany Lord, together with their mentors, Drs. Stefan Ambs and Gretchen Gierach, were awarded the Center for Cancer Research (CCR) Health Disparities Flex Award for their proposal, “Investigation of the immune microenvironment landscape in tumor and normal breast tissues from women of African ancestry through an integrated single-cell and computational pathology approach.” The CCR Health Disparity Awards are a new category under the CCR Flex Program. This intramural funding mechanism funds high-risk, high-impact projects focused on reducing cancer health disparities. The team will use a multi-pronged approach to characterize the spatial transcriptomic architecture and chromatin accessibility at the single-cell level, both pre- and post-tumor development. The proposed work can offer insight into etiological factors that may contribute to both the development and the aggressive characteristics of breast tumors in women of African descent.

To learn more about the CCR Health Disparities Flex Award, visit here.