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Jennifer Freedman

Associate Professor in Medicine
Medicine, Medical Oncology
DUMC Box 103861, Durham, NC 27710
905 South LaSalle Street GSRB1, Durham, NC 27710

Selected Publications


Targeting CaMKK2 Inhibits Actin Cytoskeletal Assembly to Suppress Cancer Metastasis.

Journal Article Cancer Res · September 1, 2023 UNLABELLED: Triple-negative breast cancers (TNBC) tend to become invasive and metastatic at early stages in their development. Despite some treatment successes in early-stage localized TNBC, the rate of distant recurrence remains high, and long-term surviv ... Full text Link to item Cite

Editorial: Racial health disparity in cancer: assessments of need

Journal Article Frontiers in Oncology · January 1, 2023 Full text Cite

Characterization of a castrate-resistant prostate cancer xenograft derived from a patient of West African ancestry.

Conference Prostate Cancer Prostatic Dis · September 2022 BACKGROUND: Prostate cancer is a clinically and molecularly heterogeneous disease, with highest incidence and mortality among men of African ancestry. To date, prostate cancer patient-derived xenograft (PCPDX) models to study this disease have been difficu ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

A widespread length-dependent splicing dysregulation in cancer.

Journal Article Science advances · August 2022 Dysregulation of alternative splicing is a key molecular hallmark of cancer. However, the common features and underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we report an intriguing length-dependent splicing regulation in cancers. By systematically analyzing t ... Full text Open Access Cite

Deciphering associations between three RNA splicing-related genetic variants and lung cancer risk.

Journal Article NPJ Precis Oncol · June 30, 2022 Limited efforts have been made in assessing the effect of genome-wide profiling of RNA splicing-related variation on lung cancer risk. In the present study, we first identified RNA splicing-related genetic variants linked to lung cancer in a genome-wide pr ... Full text Link to item Cite

Adaptive stress response genes associated with breast cancer subtypes and survival outcomes reveal race-related differences.

Journal Article NPJ Breast Cancer · June 13, 2022 Aggressive breast cancer variants, like triple negative and inflammatory breast cancer, contribute to disparities in survival and clinical outcomes among African American (AA) patients compared to White (W) patients. We previously identified the dominant r ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Dysregulation of the ESRP2-NF2-YAP/TAZ axis promotes hepatobiliary carcinogenesis in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Journal Article Journal of hepatology · September 2021 Background & aimsNon-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), the hepatic correlate of the metabolic syndrome, is a major risk factor for hepatobiliary cancer (HBC). Although chronic inflammation is thought to be the root cause of all these diseases ... Full text Cite

A prospective trial of abiraterone acetate plus prednisone in Black and White men with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer.

Journal Article Cancer · August 15, 2021 BACKGROUND: Retrospective analyses of randomized trials suggest that Black men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) have longer survival than White men. The authors conducted a prospective study of abiraterone acetate plus prednison ... Full text Link to item Cite

Differential alternative RNA splicing and transcription events between tumors from African American and White patients in The Cancer Genome Atlas.

Journal Article Genomics · May 2021 Individuals of African ancestry suffer disproportionally from higher incidence, aggressiveness, and mortality for particular cancers. This disparity likely results from an interplay among differences in multiple determinants of health, including difference ... Full text Link to item Cite

RNA splicing and aggregate gene expression differences in lung squamous cell carcinoma between patients of West African and European ancestry.

Journal Article Lung Cancer · March 2021 OBJECTIVES: Despite disparities in lung cancer incidence and mortality, the molecular landscape of lung cancer in patients of African ancestry remains underexplored, and race-related differences in RNA splicing remain unexplored. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We ... Full text Link to item Cite

Biological Aspects of Cancer Health Disparities.

Book · January 27, 2021 Racial and ethnic disparities span the continuum of cancer care and are driven by a complex interplay among social, psychosocial, lifestyle, environmental, health system, and biological determinants of health. Research is needed to identify these determina ... Full text Link to item Cite

A Zebrafish Model of Metastatic Colonization Pinpoints Cellular Mechanisms of Circulating Tumor Cell Extravasation.

Journal Article Frontiers in oncology · January 2021 Metastasis is a multistep process in which cells must detach, migrate/invade local structures, intravasate, circulate, extravasate, and colonize. A full understanding of the complexity of this process has been limited by the lack of ability to study these ... Full text Cite

Alternative RNA Splicing as a Potential Major Source of Untapped Molecular Targets in Precision Oncology and Cancer Disparities.

Journal Article Clin Cancer Res · May 15, 2019 Studies of alternative RNA splicing (ARS) have the potential to provide an abundance of novel targets for development of new biomarkers and therapeutics in oncology, which will be necessary to improve outcomes for patients with cancer and mitigate cancer d ... Full text Link to item Cite

Single-nucleotide polymorphisms of stemness genes predicted to regulate RNA splicing, microRNA and oncogenic signaling are associated with prostate cancer survival.

Journal Article Carcinogenesis · July 3, 2018 Prostate cancer (PCa) is a clinically and molecularly heterogeneous disease, with variation in outcomes only partially predicted by grade and stage. Additional tools to distinguish indolent from aggressive disease are needed. Phenotypic characteristics of ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Corrigendum: Alternative splicing promotes tumour aggressiveness and drug resistance in African American prostate cancer.

Journal Article Nat Commun · September 27, 2017 This corrects the article DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15921. ... Full text Link to item Cite

Associations between RNA splicing regulatory variants of stemness-related genes and racial disparities in susceptibility to prostate cancer.

Journal Article Int J Cancer · August 15, 2017 Evidence suggests that cells with a stemness phenotype play a pivotal role in oncogenesis, and prostate cells exhibiting this phenotype have been identified. We used two genome-wide association study (GWAS) datasets of African descendants, from the Multiet ... Full text Link to item Cite

Alternative splicing promotes tumour aggressiveness and drug resistance in African American prostate cancer.

Journal Article Nat Commun · June 30, 2017 Clinical challenges exist in reducing prostate cancer (PCa) disparities. The RNA splicing landscape of PCa across racial populations has not been fully explored as a potential molecular mechanism contributing to race-related tumour aggressiveness. Here, we ... Full text Link to item Cite

Treatment-related neuroendocrine prostate cancer resulting in Cushing's syndrome.

Journal Article Int J Urol · December 2016 Here we present, to the best of our knowledge, the first case of a paraneoplastic Cushing's syndrome (hypercortisolism) resulting from treatment-related neuroendocrine prostate cancer - a highly aggressive and difficult disease to treat. A 51-year-old man ... Full text Link to item Cite

Targeted Exome Sequencing of the Cancer Genome in Patients with Very High-risk Bladder Cancer.

Journal Article Eur Urol · November 2016 UNLABELLED: We completed targeted exome sequencing of the tumors of 50 patients with pTis-pT4b bladder cancer. Mutations were categorized by type, stratified against previously identified cancer loci in the Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer and The ... Full text Link to item Cite

Snail promotes resistance to enzalutamide through regulation of androgen receptor activity in prostate cancer.

Journal Article Oncotarget · August 2, 2016 Treatment with androgen-targeted therapies can induce upregulation of epithelial plasticity pathways. Epithelial plasticity is known to be important for metastatic dissemination and therapeutic resistance. The goal of this study is to elucidate the functio ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Melanoma

Journal Article · August 29, 2013 Full text Cite

Melanoma

Chapter · November 15, 2012 Full text Cite

Characterization of an oxaliplatin sensitivity predictor in a preclinical murine model of colorectal cancer.

Journal Article Mol Cancer Ther · July 2012 Despite advances in contemporary chemotherapeutic strategies, long-term survival still remains elusive for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer. A better understanding of the molecular markers of drug sensitivity to match therapy with patient is need ... Full text Link to item Cite

A methodology for utilization of predictive genomic signatures in FFPE samples.

Journal Article BMC Med Genomics · July 11, 2011 BACKGROUND: Gene expression signatures developed to measure the activity of oncogenic signaling pathways have been used to dissect the heterogeneity of tumor samples and to predict sensitivity to various cancer drugs that target components of the relevant ... Full text Link to item Cite

Use of gene expression and pathway signatures to characterize the complexity of human melanoma.

Journal Article Am J Pathol · June 2011 A defining characteristic of most human cancers is heterogeneity, resulting from the somatic acquisition of a complex array of genetic and genomic alterations. Dissecting this heterogeneity is critical to developing an understanding of the underlying mecha ... Full text Link to item Cite

A combinatorial mechanism for determining the specificity of E2F activation and repression.

Journal Article Oncogene · August 13, 2009 Various studies have detailed the role of E2F proteins in both transcription activation and repression. Further study has shown that distinct promoter elements, but comprising the same E2F-recognition motif, confer positive or negative E2F control and that ... Full text Link to item Cite

Effects of mismatch repair and Hpr1 on transcription-stimulated mitotic recombination in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Journal Article DNA Repair (Amst) · November 2, 2004 High levels of transcription driven by the GAL1-10 promoter stimulate mitotic recombination between direct repeats (DR) as well as between substrates positioned on non-homologous chromosomes. When the substrates are on non-homologous chromosomes, transcrip ... Full text Link to item Cite

Identification of a distinctive mutation spectrum associated with high levels of transcription in yeast.

Journal Article Mol Cell Biol · June 2004 High levels of transcription are associated with increased mutation rates in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a phenomenon termed transcription-associated mutation (TAM). To obtain insight into the mechanism of TAM, we obtained LYS2 forward mutation spectra under ... Full text Link to item Cite

Genetic requirements for spontaneous and transcription-stimulated mitotic recombination in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Journal Article Genetics · September 2002 The genetic requirements for spontaneous and transcription-stimulated mitotic recombination were determined using a recombination system that employs heterochromosomal lys2 substrates that can recombine only by crossover or only by gene conversion. The sub ... Full text Link to item Cite

Polychaetoid is required to restrict segregation of sensory organ precursors from proneural clusters in Drosophila.

Journal Article Mech Dev · July 1996 Reduction of wild-type activity of the polychaetoid (pyd) gene results in formation of extra mechanosensory bristles on the head and notum of adult Drosophila. Loss of pyd function results in decreased ability to restrict sensory organ precursor (SOP) form ... Full text Link to item Cite