Celine M. Vachon, Ph.D.

The goal of this research is to identify risk profiles of women (with particular emphasis on Hispanic women) for breast cancer based on family history, breast density and other factors known to impact risk such as age, weight, age at menarche, age at birth of first child, etc.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The disease was first identified in 2019 in Wuhan, China, and has since spread globally resulting in over 1 million confirmed cases in the US and 81,000 deaths to date. While the majority of cases result in mild symptoms, some progress to pneumonia and multi-organ failure, challenging our hospital capacity and available medical staff. Current estimates of confirmed COVID-19 cases miss those who have recovered from infection prior to widespread testing, those with mild or no symptoms, and those with symptoms who have not been tested due to limited availability of testing.  Thus, the true prevalence of COVID-19 infections in the US, Minnesota, and our surrounding community is unknown.  Antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in the blood indicate that someone has been infected with the virus and developed an immune response.  Whether or not these individuals are protected from re-infection and how long this protection (if it exists) lasts are still unknown.

Further, a number of persons are at higher risk of infection compared to the general population due to greater exposure to COVID-19.  In particular, first responders, persons working in long term care facilities that have had outbreaks of COVID-19, and day care providers.  Understanding rates of asymptomatic infections, rates of seroconversion, and risk of re-infection in these groups will be critical to understanding protective immunity.  In addition, this information will help inform public health measures to better isolate and prevent spread of COVID-19 in these settings in the future.

To address these questions, we propose two surveillance studies of SARS-CoV-2 in the general population and high risk settings to estimate the extent of SARS-CoV-2 infections in our surrounding community.  We propose to use CLIA approved tests to identify serum antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 to identify past infection.

The purpose of this study is to examine behavioral and psychological outcomes of breast density notification using a 3-group randomized design comparing usual written notification to two educationally-enhanced approaches.

The purpose of this study is to execute a long-term retrospective observational cohort study of women who underwent screening mammography (defined as digital mammography or tomosynthesis).

This study proposes to combine data from six large existing epidemiology studies to examine the association of MD and clinical risk factors with breast cancer subtypes. 

The primary purpose of this study is to evaluate the risk of progression from Monoclonal Gammopathy of Undetermined Significance (MGUS) to Multiple Myleoma (MM) and other lymphoproliferative disorders (LPDs), in individuals from high-risk families, through serial monitoring of markers of progression (i.e., M-protein, Free light chain).

GRAIL is using high-intensity sequencing of circulating cell-free nucleic acids (cfNAs) to develop blood tests to detect cancer early. The purpose of this study is to train and validate an assay to detect invasive breast cancer in patients undergoing mammography.

The purpose of this study is to understand the causes of breast cancer, in particular the connection between genetic variations and breast density or how tissue is distributed on a mammogram.