Ritu Aneja

Georgia State University | GSU · Department of Biology

Purpose Black-White racial disparities have long been recognized in cancer incidence. National estimates may not reflect racial disparities in individual states. In Alabama (AL), a primarily rural underserved state, Black Americans are more often diagnosed with breast, prostate and colorectal cancer (CRC), with Black men more often diagnosed with l...

Introduction: Research indicates a general lack of awareness regarding the link between alcohol consumption and cancer risk, particularly among women in the United States (US). This study aims to explore women's knowledge of alcohol's role in breast cancer risk and its sociodemographic correlates, including risk denial (RD) and risk relativization...

Breast cancer (BCa) is one of the most common malignancies among women worldwide. It is a complex disease that is characterized by morphological and molecular heterogeneity. In the early stages of the disease, most BCa cases are treatable, particularly hormone receptor-positive and HER2-positive tumors. Unfortunately, triple-negative BCa and metast...

Background Tumor recurrence and metastatic progression remains the leading cause for breast cancer related mortalities. However, the proteomes of patient- matched primary breast cancer (BC) and metastatic lesions have not yet been identified, due to the lack of clinically annotated longitudinal samples. In this study, we evaluated the global-proteo...

African American (AA) women are twice as likely to develop triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) as women of European descent. Additionally, AA women with TNBC present a much more aggressive disease course than their European American (EA) counterparts. Thus, there is an unmet clinical need to identify race-specific biomarkers and improve survival o...

Background Alcohol use is an established yet modifiable risk factor for breast cancer. However, recent research indicates that the vast majority of U.S. women are unaware that alcohol use is a risk factor for breast cancer. There is limited information about the sociodemographic characteristics and alcohol use correlates of awareness of the alcohol...

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive subtype of breast cancer associated with high rates of recurrence and metastasis, which contribute to poor overall survival. The challenges in treating TNBC stem from its high intratumor heterogeneity and lack of expression of the estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and human epidermal gro...

Racial disparities in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) outcomes have been reported. However, the biological mechanisms underlying these disparities remain unclear. We integrated imaging mass cytometry and spatial transcriptomics, to characterize the tumor microenvironment (TME) of African American (AA) and European American (EA) patients with T...

Background Pathological complete response (pCR) is associated with favorable prognosis in patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). However, only 30–40% of TNBC patients treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) show pCR, while the remaining 60–70% show residual disease (RD). The role of the tumor microenvironment in NAC response in pat...

Background: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) is the standard treatment for early-stage triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). The primary endpoint of NAC is a pathological complete response (pCR). NAC results in pCR in only 30–40% of TNBC patients. Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), Ki67 and phosphohistone H3 (pH3) are a few known biomarkers to pr...

Purpose: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a molecularly complex and heterogeneous breast cancer subtype with distinct biological features and clinical behavior. Although TNBC is associated with an increased risk of metastasis and recurrence, the molecular mechanisms underlying TNBC metastasis remain unclear. We performed whole-exome sequenc...

Background Pathological complete response (pCR) is associated with favorable prognosis in patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). However, only 30–40% of TNBC patients treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) show pCR, while the remaining 60–70% show residual disease (RD). The role of the tumor microenvironment (TME) in NAC response...

Background: Little is known regarding the association between insurance status and treatment delays in women with breast cancer and whether this association varies by neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation status. Methods: In this cohort study, we used medical record data of women diagnosed with breast cancer between 2004 and 2022 at two Georgia...

Background: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) is the standard treatment for early-stage triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). The primary endpoint of NAC is a pathological complete response (pCR). NAC results in pCR in only 30% to 40% of TNBC patients. Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), Ki67 and phosphohistone H3 (pH3) are a few known biomarkers t...

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a heterogeneous breast cancer subtype that lacks expression of estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2. Approximately 15%-20% of breast cancers are triple-negative. Based on expression of the androgen receptor (AR), TNBC can be categorized as AR-positive (AR+ TNB...

For routine pathology diagnosis and imaging-based biomedical research, Whole-slide image (WSI) analyses have been largely limited to a 2D tissue image space. For a more definitive tissue representation to support fine-resolution spatial and integrative analyses, it is critical to extend such tissue-based investigations to a 3D tissue space with spa...

This research had two aims: (1) to assess how often bisexual and lesbian women self-report screening and counseling for alcohol use in primary care settings; and (2) understand how bisexual and lesbian women respond to brief messages that alcohol increases breast cancer risk. The study sample consisted of 4891 adult U.S. women who responded to an o...

Protein diversity due to alternative mRNA splicing or post-translational modifications (PTMs) plays a vital role in various cellular functions. The mitotic kinases polo-like kinase 1 (PLK1) and Aurora B (AURKB) phosphorylate survivin, an inhibitor of apoptosis (IAP) family member, thereby regulating cell proliferation. PLK1, AURKB, and survivin are...

Importance: Increasing evidence suggests that low socioeconomic status and geographic residence in disadvantaged neighborhoods contribute to disparities in breast cancer outcomes. However, little epidemiological research has sought to better understand these disparities within the context of location. Objective: To examine the association betwee...

The centrosome in animal cells is instrumental in spindle pole formation, nucleation, proper alignment of microtubules during cell division, and distribution of chromosomes in each daughter cell. Centrosome amplification involving structural and numerical abnormalities in the centrosome can cause chromosomal instability and dysregulation of the cel...

PurposeOur research sought to describe barriers to mammography screening among a sample of predominantly Black women in metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia.Methods The Pink Panel project convened community leaders from faith-based institutions to administer an offline survey to women via convenience sampling at fourteen churches in Atlanta in late 2019 a...

Motivation Predicting pathological complete response (pCR) to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients accurately is direly needed for clinical decision making. pCR is also regarded as a strong predictor of overall survival. In this work, we propose a deep learning system to predict pCR to NAC based on serial...

Whole-slide image (WSI) analysis has been largely performed in a 2D tissue space to support routine pathology diagnosis and imaging based biomedical research. For a more definitive representation and characterization of the tissue spatial space, it is critical to extend such tissue based investigations to a 3D space by spatially aligning 2D serial...

1090 Background: Tumor recurrence and metastatic progression remain the leading cause for breast cancer related mortalities. The study aimed to identify differences in proteomics landscape in serum between (i) healthy controls and breast cancer patients, (ii) baseline samples at time of diagnosis from patients that later developed metastases versus...

Predicting pathological complete response (pCR) to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients accurately is direly needed for clinical decision making. pCR is also regarded as a strong predictor of overall survival. In this work, we propose a deep learning system to predict pCR to NAC based on serial pathology i...

Background: Although triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is associated with an increased risk of recurrence and metastasis, the molecular mechanisms underlying metastasis in TNBC remain unknown. To identify transcriptional changes and genes regulating metastatic progression in TNBC, we compared the transcriptomic profiles of primary and matched m...

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) is commonly used in breast cancer (BC) patients to increase eligibility for breast-conserving surgery. Only 30% of patients with BC show pathologic complete response (pCR) after NAC, and residual disease (RD) is associated with poor long-term prognosis. A critical barrier to improving NAC outcomes in patients with BC...

MiR-150-5p is frequently deregulated in cancer, with expression and mode of action varying according to the tumor type. Here, we investigated the expression levels and role of miR-150-5p in the aggressive breast cancer subtype triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). MiR-150-5p expression levels were analyzed in tissue samples from 113 patients with i...

Breast cancer (BC) is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women. Despite advancements in BC screening, prevention, and treatment, BC incidence and mortality remain high among African American (AA) women. Compared with European American (EA) women, AA women tend to be diagnosed with more advanced and aggressive tumors and exhibit worse survival ou...

Background Recent research highlights how the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted alcohol consumption patterns, yet research thus far has largely overlooked the experience in West Africa. Research also has not addressed how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected access to alcohol treatment, support, and alcohol harm prevention. This study addr...

Background: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a notoriously hard to treat and aggressive breast cancer (BC) subtype. Androgen receptor-positive (AR+) TNBC is characterized by AR overexpression and sensitivity to AR antagonists. In contrast, basal-like TNBC lacking AR expression, also known as quadruple-negative breast cancer (QNBC), is refrac...

Background: Pathological complete response (pCR) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) isassociated with a favorable prognosis and low recurrence rate, particularly in patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), an aggressive breast cancer subtype. However, only 30%-40%of patients with TNBC show pCR after standard NAC, while the remaining pa...

Background: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a heterogeneous breast cancer subtype with distinct biological features and clinical behavior. TNBC is associated with an increased risk of metastasis and recurrence. In this whole exome study, we investigated the genetic profiles of primary TNBC tumors and paired metastases using next-generation...

Background: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) comprises 10%-20% of invasive breast carcinoma cases. Patients with TNBC exhibit poorer 5-year survival and higher rates of metastasis and recurrence than patients with other breast cancer subtypes. TNBC is further divided based on gene expression profiling into androgen receptor (AR)-positive (AR+)...

Background: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) is becoming the standard of care for aggressive breast cancer (BC). In patients with BC, NAC can increase eligibility for breast-conserving surgery, lower the excision volume, and assist in evaluating the disease course. NAC may shrink (residual disease, RD) or even eliminate (pathologic complete response,...

Centrosome amplification (CA) has been implicated in the progression of various cancer types. Although studies have shown that overexpression of PLK4 promotes CA, the effect of tumor microenvironment on polo-like kinase 4 (PLK4) regulation is understudied. The aim of this study was to examine the role of hypoxia in promoting CA via PLK4. We found t...

Cancer cells display altered cellular lipid metabolism, including disruption in endogenous lipid synthesis, storage, and exogenous uptake for membrane biogenesis and functions. Altered lipid metabolism and, consequently, lipid composition impacts cellular function by affecting membrane structure and properties, such as fluidity, rigidity, membrane...

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) can be further classified into androgen receptor (AR)-positive TNBC and AR-negative TNBC or quadruple-negative breast cancer (QNBC). Here, we investigated genomic instability in 53 clinical cases by array-CGH and miRNA expression profiling. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed that 64% of TNBC samples lacked AR...

In triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) treatment, early prediction of pathological complete response (PCR) from chemotherapy before surgical operations is crucial for optimal treatment planning. We propose a novel deep learning-based system to predict PCR to neoadjuvant chemotherapy for TNBC patients with multi-stained histopathology images of ser...

Precision (or personalized) medicine holds great promise in the treatment of breast cancer. The success of personalized medicine is contingent upon inclusivity and representation for minority groups in clinical trials. In this article, we focus on the roadblocks for the African American demographic, including the barriers to access and enrollment i...

As the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) continues to surge worldwide, our knowledge of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) is rapidly expanding. Although most COVID‐19 patients recover within weeks of symptom onset, some experience lingering symptoms that last for months (“long COVID‐19”). Early reports of COVI...

Numerical and/or structural centrosome amplification (CA) is a hallmark of cancers that is often associated with the aberrant tumor karyotypes and poor clinical outcomes. Mechanistically, CA compromises mitotic fidelity and leads to chromosome instability (CIN), which underlies tumor initiation and progression. Recent technological advances in micr...

Although polyploid cells were first described nearly two centuries ago, their ability to proliferate has only recently been demonstrated. It also becomes increasingly evident that a subset of tumor cells, polyploid giant cancer cells (PGCCs), play a critical role in the pathophysiology of breast cancer (BC), among other cancer types. In BC, PGCCs c...

The stark racial disparities related to the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., wherein minority populations are disproportionately getting infected and succumbing to the disease, is of grave concern. It is critical to understand and address the underlying causes of these disparities that are complex and driven by interacting environmental, social and b...

Background The prognosis of patients with pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PanNET), the second most common type of pancreatic cancer, varies significantly, and up to 15% of patients develop metastasis. Although certain morphological characteristics of PanNETs have been associated with patient outcome, there are no available morphology-based progno...

Based on the androgen receptor (AR) expression, triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) can be subdivided into AR-positive TNBC and AR-negative TNBC, also known as quadruple-negative breast cancer (QNBC). QNBC characterization and treatment is fraught with many challenges. In QNBC, there is a greater paucity of prognostic biomarkers and therapeutic ta...

Ginger (Zingiber officinale) is one of the most widely consumed dietary supplements worldwide. Its anticancer potential has been demonstrated in various studies. However, ginger roots obtained from different geographical locations showed extensive variability in their activities, mainly due to differences in the levels of bioactive compounds. Here...

Simple Summary Cancer patients are a highly vulnerable subgroup in this coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This crisis has dramatically disrupted the continuous care provided to cancer patients, as well as diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Thus, studies that help gain insights into COVID-19 prevalence, disease severity, prognosis, a...

p> Background: The presence of supernumerary or abnormally large centrosomes, also known as centrosome amplification (CA), drives tumor progression by enhancing chromosomal instability, and altering cellular microtubule cytoskeletons and tissue cytoarchitectures to promote the migration and invasion capabilities of cancer cells. Although the preval...

Background The current recommendation is to reflex test HER2 immunohistochemistry (IHC) equivocal breast cancer cases with fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis. Either IHC 3+ or FISH positive cancers are considered HER2 positive (HER2+) and treated with HER2 targeted therapy. This study examined the predictive value of HER IHC or FISH...

Description of the front cover image: The cover image is based on the EXPERTS INSIGHTS Spotlighting the hypoxia‐centrosome amplification axis by Karuna Mittal and Ritu Aneja, https://doi.org/10.1002/med.21663.

Protein structural alterations, including misfolding and aggregation, are a hallmark of several diseases, including cancer. However, the possible clinical application of protein conformational analysis using infrared spectroscopy to detect cancer-associated structural changes in proteins has not been established yet. The present study investigates...

Mitotic kinases such as polo-like kinase 1 (PLK1) and aurora kinase B (AURKB) are known to phosphorylate survivin, an IAP family member, to mediate cell survival and proliferation. Interestingly, the triad is significantly overexpressed in multiple tumors including triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), an aggressive breast cancer subtype, associate...

Background: Racial disparities in breast cancer outcomes appear to be widening in the US despite multiple advancements in breast cancer (BC) management. Although BC incidence rates are similar between European-American (EA) and African American (AA) women in the US, striking differences exist in age-adjusted mortality rates. Moreover, AAs only repr...

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) disproportionately affects African-American (AA) women. Literature underscores that women from West Africa exhibit higher TNBC incidence and mortality rates than AA women. Distinctions in inherent tumor biology between the races have been speculated to underlie this global disparate burden. We conducted a multi-...

Background: African American (AA) triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients experience worse clinical outcomes and exhibit 40% higher mortality rate than their European Americans (EAs) counterparts. There are currently no distinctions in inherent tumor biology between the ethnically distinct TNBC patients that serve as risk-predictive markers a...

Background: Prostatic adenocarcinoma (PCA) in African Americans (AA) is characterized by earlier onset, higher aggressiveness, more frequent metastases, and increased mortality rates compared to those in European Americans (EA). Exome and genome sequencing have revealed that PCA in AAs also exhibits high intratumor heterogeneity (ITH) than their co...

Protein diversity arising from alternative mRNA splicing or post-translational modifications (PTM) such as phosphorylation, methylation etc. plays a vital role in the modulation of cellular functions. Mitotic kinases such as polo-like kinase 1 (PLK1) and aurora B (AURKB) are known to phosphorylate survivin, an inhibitor of apoptosis family member,...

Women of African descent in the United States are twice as likely to develop triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), compared to women of European descent. African American (AA) women with TNBC present a much more aggressive disease course relative to their European American (EA) counterparts. Thus, there is an urgent need to evaluate race-specific b...

e12536 Background: Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a molecularly complex and heterogeneous subtype with distinct biological features and clinical behavior. Extensive intra-tumor heterogeneity is suspected to be a major cause of therapeutic failure. Spatially-distinct parts of the tumor harbor diverse and divergent clonal populations of canc...

The absence of a robust risk stratification tool for triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) underlies imprecise and nonselective treatment of these patients with cytotoxic chemotherapy. This study aimed to interrogate transcriptomes of TNBC resected samples using next generation sequencing to identify novel biomarkers associated with disease outcomes...

Human papillomavirus-negative (HPV-neg) oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinomas (OPSCCs) are associated with poorer overall survival (OS) compared with HPV-positive (HPV-pos) OPSCCs. The major obstacle in improving outcomes of HPV-neg patients is the lack of robust biomarkers and therapeutic targets. Herein, we investigated the role of centrosome am...

Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 3 (HER3) have been investigated as triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) biomarkers. Reduced EGFR levels can be compensated by increases in HER3; thus, assaying EGFR and HER3 together may improve prognostic value. In a multi-institutional cohort of 510 TNBC patients,...

Background: Based on the expression of androgen receptor (AR), triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is subdivided into AR-positive and AR-negative subtypes. Although AR is a potential therapeutic target for AR-positive TNBC, its prognostic role in TNBC remains controversial. Lack of AR expression is associated with a more aggressive disease course....

Neighborhoods encompass complex environments comprised of unique economic, physical, and social characteristics that have a profound impact on the residing individual’s health and, collectively, on the community’s wellbeing. Neighborhood disadvantage (ND) is one of several factors that prominently contributes to racial breast cancer (BC) health dis...