Julie Palmer, ScD, Receives American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant

Julie Palmer, ScD, co-director of the Boston University-Boston Medical Center (BU-BMC) Cancer Center, has been awarded a three-year, $360,000 Institutional Research Grant from the national chapter of the American Cancer Society (ACS). This grant will allow the BU-BMC Cancer Center to provide pilot funds for cancer research to early-career investigators.

These funds will make it possible for investigators to complete promising new projects and/or pursue novel ideas that will provide preliminary data for future grant applications to other agencies and programs. Grant eligible research fields include basic science, biomedical engineering, translational, clinical, epidemiologic and psychosocial research. These awards will not only help early-career investigators to advance their research programs, but also will connect them to a cohort of cancer researchers from disciplines other than their own.

Cancer research currently takes place at many schools within Boston University, including the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine, Schools of Public Health, Social Work, Engineering and the College of Liberal Arts, as well as at Boston Medical Center. “We are excited to have this opportunity to continue participating in the American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grants program,” said Palmer who also is the Karin Grunebaum Professor in Cancer Research at Chobanian & Avedisian SOM and director of BU’s Slone Epidemiology Center. “In addition to basic scientists who would typically apply for pilot funds, I expect to see an increase in applicants from the field of bioengineering and applicants who have a focus on cancer health disparities,” adds Palmer.

Palmer is a cancer epidemiologist with research projects spanning cancer early detection, etiology, and survivorship. Her primary focus is on elucidating reasons for the disproportionately high incidence of hormone receptor negative breast cancer in African American women and on understanding and reducing racial disparities in breast cancer mortality.

She is a founding leader of the Black Women’s Health Study (BWHS), a prospective cohort study of 59,000 African American women who enrolled in 1995 and have been followed by biennial questionnaire since that time. Palmer’s breast cancer research within the BWHS includes work on risk prediction models for breast cancer in African American women, identifying differences in childbearing patterns as a contributing cause to the excess incidence of estrogen receptor negative breast cancer in African American women and investigating the interrelationships of type 2 diabetes, obesity, and inflammation on breast cancer risk. She has served on many National Institutes of Health (NIH) and external advisory committees, including as Chair of the NIH Cancer, Cardiovascular, and Sleep Epidemiology Study Section, and as Co-Chair of a Working Group for the National Cancer Advisory Board, National Cancer Institute.