Titles and Affiliations
Associate Member
Chief of Disparities, Department of Surgery
Associate Attending Surgeon, Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases
Associate Professor of Surgery
Weill Medical College of Cornell Medical University
Research area
Exploring how an individual’s neighborhood environment impacts their breast cancer development and growth.
Impact
An individual’s neighborhood impacts many aspects of their life with disadvantaged neighborhoods experiencing limited access to healthcare, nutritious food, clean air and water, and more. In fact, despite significant advances in breast cancer screening, diagnosis, and treatment, women living in disadvantaged compared to advantaged neighborhoods have higher breast cancer mortality rates. Drs. Goel and Kesmodel are conducting studies to examine precisely how neighborhood disadvantage influences breast cancer survival and how neighborhood disadvantage “gets under the skin” and impacts an aggressive tumor microenvironment (TME). They hope that her findings will enhance our understanding of the epidemiologic and genomic links between neighborhood disadvantages and aggressive breast cancer TME. The team will also examine the connection between psychological stress in these neighborhoods and tumor aggressiveness. Their results may pave the way for future development of strategies to target modifiable factors and potentially level the playing field for those in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Progress Thus Far
Drs. Goel and Kesmodel and their colleagues are leveraging epidemiologic and genomic data from the ongoing Miami Breast Cancer Disparities Study, a prospective longitudinal cohort study with 280 breast cancer biospecimens and validated survey data on perceived neighborhood stress. Samples from this large and diverse cohort of patients (approximately 55 percent Hispanic, 20 percent Black, 21 percent White) are being utilized to map the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which neighborhood disadvantage leads to aggressive tumor biology, specifically how tumor drivers correlate with disadvantaged neighborhoods. In the last year, the research team stained 108 samples for proteins associated with TME aggressiveness–CD31, CD68, and LYVE-1. Neighborhood surveys and clinical and long-term outcome data for these 108 patients were collected. Analysis is ongoing.
What’s next
They will continue to analyze the samples and correlate their findings with neighborhood level factors: The next steps will be to complete the gene expression analysis on the 108 samples and correlate with CD31, CD68, and LYVE-1 staining and outcome data. The results of these studies will improve our understanding of how the environment where people live impacts their breast cancer outcomes.
Biography
Neha Goel, MD is an Associate Member and Chief of Disparities in the Department of Surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She is also an Associate Attending Surgeon at Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases and Associate Professor of Surgery at Weill Medical College of Cornell Medical University. Prior to these appointments, she was an Associate Professor of Surgery, surgical oncologist and scientist, and social epidemiologist at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, a part of University of Miami Health Systems at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She has vast clinical expertise in the multidisciplinary management of breast cancer, melanoma, and sarcoma and is an internationally recognized expert in cancer disparities.
Dr. Goel received her medical degree from University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago in 2010 and completed a general surgical residency at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. She also has a master’s in public health from Harvard T. Chan School of Public Health in Boston and has completed several other fellowships and training: at Harvard Medical School’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital she completed a surgical critical care fellowship and a research fellowship at the Center for Surgery and Public Health; and at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, she completed a complex general surgical oncology fellowship.
Dr. Goel established and leads the Miami Breast Cancer Disparities Study, a prospective epidemiologic cohort study to understand multilevel pathways of breast cancer disparities. She is currently the principal investigator on multiple grants dedicated to using translational epidemiologic approaches to discover targeted therapies and cancer control interventions for diverse racial/ethnic and socioeconomically vulnerable populations, with the ultimate goal of improving cancer health equity.
