Drs. Lusine Yaghjyan and Volker Mai Win UFHCC Pilot Award

Assistant Professor in Epidemiology Lusine Yaghjyan, MD, MPH, PhD, and Associate Professor in Epidemiology Volker Mai, PhD, MPH, were recently awarded a $42,000 collaborative, multiple P.I. pilot grant from the UF Health Cancer Center (UFHCC) Cancer Therapeutics and Host Response Program Collaborative Team. Dr. Yaghjyan’s research focuses on biological pathways from high breast density to breast tumors, and Dr. Mai’s research focuses on if the role of microbiota in disease etiology and prevention. Drs. Yaghjyan and Mai’s April 2016 paper, explored a possibility of establishing microbiota–based targets for prevention and treatment of certain cancers. Through this new one-year, UFHCC-funded project, entitled “Correlations between breast microbiota and tissue methylation pattern,” Drs. Yaghjyan and Mai are collaborating again to measure breast microbiota in normal breast tissue samples and linking specific bacterial signatures to genome methylation profiles. We are excited to see where this research takes them and UF.