Focus Carolina: Lisa Carey

One of the world’s leading experts in breast cancer research, Lisa Carey works every day to better understand the disease and to find new treatment options for patients.

At the UNC School of Medicine and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, Carey examines different subtypes of breast cancer, evaluates new drugs and studies tumor characteristics that predict the response to therapy. Her work focuses on tailoring and optimizing the type and amount of therapy patients receive.

More than 250,000 women in the U.S. are diagnosed with breast cancer every year. For a long time, breast cancer has been a major cause of illness and death in the United States and the good news is that, in part because of early detection and better treatment, the likelihood of dying from the disease has dropped about 40% over the last two decades.

While researchers have made great strides in treating breast cancer, more work needs to be done. Advances have been made in certain subtypes of breast cancer, like HER2 positive tumors.

“HER2 positive breast cancer, which was our worst prognosis kind of breast cancer, is now one of our best prognosis kinds of breast cancer simply because of the advent of not just one, but several really effective anti-HER2 drugs,” Carey said.

Dr. Carey has worked extensively with scientists across Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Gillings School of Global Public Health to better understand and characterize the molecular subtypes of breast cancer so that prevention and treatment strategies can be developed.

One of the reasons she wanted to come to Carolina was because of its excellent reputation for collaboration.

“We really have a culture where people are expected to collaborate from a research standpoint to try and understand what each other is doing and how that might help,” she said.

Learn more about breast cancer research at Carolina by listening to this week’s segments.

Every day, faculty members at UNC-Chapel Hill engage in groundbreaking research, innovative teaching and public service that makes an impact in our community and the state, nation and the world.

Tune in to Focus Carolina during morning, noon and evening drive times and on the weekends to hear their stories and find out what ignites their passion for their work. Focus Carolina is an exclusive program on WCHL, sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can listen to WCHL at 97.9 FM or 1360 AM.