Titles and Affiliations
Associate Professor, Department of Surgery and Department of Population Sciences
Chief, Division of Breast Surgery
Conquer Cancer – The ASCO Foundation
Research area
Understanding the biological factors that contribute to drug resistance in Black women with breast cancer.
Impact
Anti-estrogen therapy, also known as endocrine therapy, has dramatically improved outcomes in estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer, the most diagnosed form of the disease. Despite the use of endocrine therapy, however, Black women still die at a disproportionately higher rate from ER-positive breast cancer. Research by Dr. Jones has confirmed that Black women have a different reaction to endocrine therapy. She has identified a gene named UBE2C, which is expressed significantly higher in Black compared to white women, as being associated with worse survival in ER-positive breast cancer.
Progress Thus Far
The African American Breast Cancer Epidemiology and Risk (AMBER) is a consortium of four studies established by the National Cancer Institute pools data and biological samples from Black women with breast cancer. The focus of Dr. Jones’s Conquer Cancer research, supported by BCRF, is to use the data provided by the AMBER consortium to characterize the gene expression in tumors of Black women treated with endocrine therapy. This year, Dr. Jones and her team identified several genes associated with poor outcomes in patients with ER-positive breast cancer and further stratified those genes into those associated with early vs late recurrence. Interestingly, UBE2C was identified as a gene associated with early recurrence, regardless of race or ethnicity.
What’s next
Dr. Jones and her team are now preparing for a large-scale clinical trial to evaluate UBE2C and related genes as biomarkers that can predict which patients are at risk for early recurrence. This work is especially critical given the lack of tools to identify endocrine therapy resistance. This research could lead to more personalized, effective treatments, especially in Black women.
Biography
Veronica Jones, MD, FACS is a breast surgical oncologist at City of Hope in Duarte, CA. She earned her undergraduate degree with honors from Stanford University before receiving her medical doctorate with honors from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, TN. While in medical school, she was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) National Medical Honor Society and traveled to Kenya to complete clerkships in HIV/AIDS and reproductive health. Dr. Jones continued her postdoctoral training at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, TX, with a categorical general surgery internship and residency. At Baylor, Dr. Jones was honored as chief resident of the year. In 2014, she completed a breast surgical oncology fellowship at Emory University in Atlanta, GA before joining the faculty there as an assistant professor. She has been an assistant professor at City of Hope since 2015, with dual appointments in the Department of Surgery, Division of Breast Surgery, and the Department of Population Sciences, Division of Health Equities.
Board-certified in surgery, Dr. Jones is both a practicing clinician and translational researcher. Her overall goal is to mitigate breast cancer morbidity and mortality, especially in Black/African American women who disproportionately die from this disease. Her current research efforts focus on developing targeted therapies for ER-positive breast cancer to not only diminish racial disparities but improve survival for all patients with ER-positive breast cancer. To this end, she performs analyses to further understand the genomic and proteomic drivers of therapy resistance, recurrence, and progression. Additionally, Dr. Jones investigates novel imaging techniques to predict disease initiation and progression. She holds active memberships with several professional societies and is heavily involved in community outreach, speaking frequently at numerous events across Southern California.
