December 11, 2003

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – UAB researcher Dr. Coral Lamartiniere has received funding from the National Institutes of Health to study the elusive environmental piece of the breast cancer puzzle – whether the prenatal-to-adult exposures to chemicals found in materials such as PVC piping, plastic wrapping and canned foods may predispose a woman to this disease.

Lamartiniere is a project leader through a seven-year grant that established a Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Center at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. Funding for that center and three others like it came recently from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Cancer Institute. The UAB funding is just over $2 million.

“Exposure to environmental chemicals during a female’s prenatal and pre-teen periods of development may play an important role in cancer susceptibility later in life,” said Lamartiniere, who is a professor of pharmacology/toxicology at UAB.

He will test how compounds such as TCDD, Bisphenol A, butyl benzyl phthalate, genistein and DES affects the mammary glands of rats during critical developmental stages, looking at how chemicals alter mammary cell development, cell proliferation, and gene and protein expression. He will also test how this correlates with the timing of a person’s exposure to the selected agents. An attempt also will be made to identify protein biomarkers in the blood taken at different stages of mammary development following exposure to the agents.

Lamartiniere has long been involved in studying how age-specific exposure to nutrients such as the soy compound genistein can affect susceptibility to breast or prostate cancer. He is affiliated with the new UAB Center for Nutrient-Gene Interaction, and is a senior scientist at the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center.