Karen Lindfors, professor of radiology and member of UC Davis Cancer Center, recently returned from a medical mission to Prishtina, capital of the Balkan republic, where she helped teach local doctors and technicians how to use the newly donated machine to screen women for breast cancer.

Karen Lindfors, professor of radiology and member of UC Davis Cancer Center, recently returned from a medical mission to Prishtina, capital of the Balkan republic, where she helped teach local doctors and technicians how to use the newly donated machine to screen women for breast cancer.

Tucked away in an unremarkable building on the outskirts of Sacramento is one of California’s most precious – and hidden – scientific assets: The California Cancer Registry.

Karen Kelly’s office walls are still bare, but her desk and shelves are piled high with research articles and study proposals. The new professor and Phase I clinical director has wasted no time working on ways to make UC Davis Cancer Center a national leader in early clinical trials accrual.

Of all the genetic factors implicated in breast cancer, mutations in the BRCA2 gene are among the most foreboding. They’re a factor in about half of all cases of hereditary breast cancer, and BRCA2 mutations are also associated with an increased risk of ovarian and a number of other cancers.

How best to treat each case of breast cancer is a thorny problem for doctors. Although breast tumors all originate in one type of tissue, the mechanisms behind their uncontrolled growth can be wildly different. Pinpointing what has gone awry can be crucial to halting breast cancer in its tracks.