Here are a few highlights of cancer research news that have recently caught my attention:

• The NIH has developed a site that outlines President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative. The NIH will also be hosting a workshop on February 11-12 to discuss the opportunities and challenges around building a large research cohort focused on precision medicine.

• Key breast cancer genes reveal distinctions between African-American women and European-American women. The study involved 1,275 European-American and 1,299 African-American women. Read more on the findings in the International Journal of Cancer.

• Four major retailers have been ordered by the New York Attorney General’s office to cease selling some of their store brand supplements. In tests, supplements from GNC, Target, Walmart and Walgreens were found lacking the advertised ingredients frequestly. Dr. David S. Seres, Director, Medical Nutrition, Associate Professor of Medicine in the Institute of Human Nutrition weighed in on the issue in an editorial piece for CNN.

• In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, lead author Kim Rhoads, MD, PhD, and colleagues from Stanford found that equitable delivery of evidence-based care eliminates the racial disparity in colon-cancer survival rates.

• Researchers at Harvard have developed a new 3-D vaccine that could be effective in fighting cancer as well as other infectious diseases. The vaccine was found to be effective in delaying tumor growth in mice. Findings were published in Nature Biotechnology.

• According to a study done at the University College London, people who worry about cancer are more likely to want to get screened for colon cancer, but feeling uncomfortable at the thought of cancer makes them less likely to actually go for the test.

Please feel free to contact Marisol Hernandez to share any comments.