Professor Named Codirector of Cancer Center.

Julie Palmer, professor of epidemiology, has been named codirector of the BU-BMC Cancer Center. Effective February 1, 2019, Palmer will lead the research and patient care center along with Matthew Kulke, chief of the Hematology and Medical Oncology Department at Boston Medical Center, and Gerald Denis, associate professor of pharmacology and medicine at the School of Medicine.

The new codirectors will bring their respective expertise in population sciences, clinical, and basic research to advance interdisciplinary research and facilitate collaboration among engineers, chemists, biologists and computer scientists, to deepen Boston University’s community of investigators who focus on cancer.

“My top priority is bringing together researchers from basic science, translational, clinical, epidemiologic, and health services research to develop groundbreaking projects on specific cancer sites,” Palmer says.

In addition to these interdisciplinary efforts, Palmer is committed to the center’s focus on cancer health disparities, particularly with regard to race and income. “Having a strong center will enable us to make progress in reducing these disparities across the entire spectrum of cancer etiology and cancer care,” she says.

Until she assumes her new role, Palmer will continue to serve as the center’s associate director of population health sciences. She is also the associate director of the Sloane Epidemiology Center.

One of the original designers of the Black Women’s Health Study, Palmer has served as a leader of the prospective cohort study of 59,000 African American women since it began in 1995. A major goal of Palmer’s research is the reduction of breast cancer mortality in young African American women by identifying the modifiable factors influencing the development of a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer, hormone receptor (ER)-negative breast cancer. Her research has shown that breastfeeding reduces the risk of ER-negative breast cancer, and that, in the absence of breastfeeding, having had more children is associated with increased risk.

With its clinical oncology and biomedical research programs, the BU-BMC Cancer Center transforms cancer management through personalized approaches for cancer detection and treatment, including a focus on understanding the molecular events associated with cancer initiation and progression in high-risk populations, and the direct translation of these findings into the clinical realm.

—Jillian McKoy