Titles and Affiliations
Professor of Epidemiology and Oncology
Director of Clinical Cancer Genetics and Prevention Service
Member of Women’s Malignancy Program
Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center
Research area
Developing personalized strategies to predict and reduce breast cancer recurrence and second cancers in survivors.
Impact
More than 4 million people in the United States are living with a history of breast cancer, and about one in nine women who survive at least a year after their first diagnosis will develop a second breast cancer within a decade. Many of these second cancers are found at later, harder-to-treat stages, and women who develop a second breast cancer face a higher risk of dying from breast cancer and from other causes. Current guidelines recommend annual mammograms for nearly all breast cancer survivors, but a one-size-fits-all approach may not serve every woman equally. Some survivors are at lower risk and may face unnecessary anxiety, biopsies, and radiation exposure from yearly imaging, while others at higher risk might benefit from more frequent monitoring to catch a new cancer earlier. Dr. Visvanathan is working to make follow-up care more personalized by developing new tools to estimate each survivor’s individual risk of a second cancer.
What’s next
Dr. Visvanathan is adapting an artificial intelligence tool that analyzes patterns in mammogram images to estimate a breast cancer survivor’s individual risk of developing a second breast cancer. This AI tool has already shown promise in predicting first-time breast cancers in women with no prior diagnosis, and Dr. Visvanathan’s team is now testing whether it can do the same for survivors. Using data from a long-term study of more than 1,400 women with a family history of breast or ovarian cancer, the team will compare mammogram patterns in women who later developed a second breast cancer to those who didn’t. They will examine how risk changes over time with different treatments. If successful, this work could help doctors tailor follow-up care to each survivor’s actual risk level, offering more frequent monitoring to those who need it mo
Biography
Kala Visvanathan is a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Department of Medical Oncology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Visvanathan is Director the Clinical Cancer Genetics and Prevention Service and the Cancer Epidemiology Track at Johns Hopkins.
She received her medical degree from the University of Sydney in Australia. She subsequently went on to complete her training in Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, an academic teaching hospital of the University of Sydney in Australia and at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center Johns Hopkins School of Mediine. Dr. Visvanathan also completed training in clinical/cancer epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Her research is focused on primary and secondary prevention of breast and ovarian cancer. Trained as a medical oncologist and cancer epidemiologist, a large part of her research is transdisciplinary and focused on translating results from the laboratory to populations, to identify at risk groups, preventable targets and to evaluate agents that have the potential to impact the natural history of breast and ovarian cancer. She conducts both observational studies and clinical prevention/early detection studies Specific exposures of interest include hormonal exposures, inflammation, genetic and epigenetic changes, DNA damage/repair, obesity and oxidative damage. She has recently co-chaired the American Society of Clinical Oncology national guideline on breast cancer risk reduction.
