Victoria Bae-Jump, MD, PhD, director of UNC Lineberger’s Endometrial Cancer Center of Excellence, has been elected co-chair of the National Cancer Institute Gynecologic Cancers Steering Committee’s Uterine Task Force.
The task force is an advisory group of some of the country’s leading experts in uterine cancer that works with the National Clinical Trials Network Steering Committees Groups, Specialized Programs of Research Excellence, and the broader gynecologic oncology community and provides expertise, review and guidance of proposed phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trial concepts uterine cancer.
The American Cancer Society estimates that more than 65,000 women in the United States will be diagnosed with uterine cancer this year – the incidence rate has been growing by 1% annually since the mid-2002s – and it will cause more than 12,500 deaths. Uterine cancer also harbors one of the largest racial disparities in cancer outcomes in the U.S. Compared to all other racial/ethnic groups, Black women have a much lower five-year survival rate from endometrial cancer than white women (63% for Black; 84% for White). In North Carolina, this disparity is even greater: Black women are twice as likely as white women to die from uterine cancer.
“I am honored to take on this new role, and am excited to help bring forward the best science and the most innovative trials for uterine cancer patients, a cancer that continues to rise in both frequency and mortality, especially for Black women, and is in desperate need of better therapies,” said Bae-Jump, who is a professor of gynecologic oncology in the UNC School of Medicine Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology.