Damali N. Martin, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Program Director, Host Susceptibility Factors Branch
Contact Information
Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program
Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences
National Cancer Institute
6130 Executive Blvd., Rm. 5120, MSC 7395
Bethesda, MD 20892-7395
(For express delivery, use Rockville, MD 20852)
telephone: (301) 451-1956
fax: (301) 402-4279
e-mail: martinda@mail.nih.gov
Interest Areas
Health disparities research, specifically for breast and prostate cancer and whether tumor biology contributes to differences in survival between African-American and Caucasian breast and prostate cancer patients.
Degrees
Ph.D. - Cell biology and Molecular Genetics
University of Maryland, College Park
M.P.H. - Epidemiology and Biostatistics
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
B.S. - Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics
University of Maryland, College Park
Biography
Dr. Martin is a Program Director in the Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program's (EGRP) Host Susceptibility Factors Branch (HSFB). Her responsibilities include management of a portfolio of grants related to factors that influence personal susceptibility to cancer. She is also the EGRP contact for the Genes, Environment, and Melanoma (GEM) Consortium
, Men of African Descent and Carcinoma of the Prostate (MADCaP) Consortium, and the African-American Breast Cancer Consortium (AABC). Dr. Martin is a health disparities expert for EGRP and is a Steering Committee member for the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS)-funded Centers for Population Health and Health Disparities. Additionally, she is the International Research Coordinator for DCCPS.
Before joining EGRP in 2008, Dr. Martin was a Cancer Prevention Fellow at NCI and worked in the Breast and Prostate Study Group in the Laboratory of Human Carcinogenesis, Center for Cancer Research. Her intramural work involved research on the association of DNA polymorphisms and breast cancer risk, as well as other epidemiological studies with a focus on molecular epidemiology and health disparities. In particular, her research focused on elucidating whether differences in breast tumor biology of African-American and European-American patients contribute to the lower survival and higher mortality of African-American women. For this research, she received two awards, a Fellows Award for Research Excellence from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a Scholar-in-Training Award from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and Aflac, Inc.
In addition to her responsibilities as a Program Director, Dr. Martin collaborates with her former Laboratory of Human Carcinogenesis to continue to examine biological determinants of disparities in survival from prostate cancer.
Selected Publications
Wallace TN, Martin DN and Amb S. Interactions among genes, tumor biology and the environment in cancer health disparities: examining the evidence on a national and global scale. Carcinogenesis, 2011; in press.
Glynn SA, Boersma BJ, Howe TM, Yi M, Yfantis HG, Ridnour LA, Martin DN, Switzer CH, Wink DA, Lee DH, Stephens RM, and Ambs S. Increased NOS2 predicts poor survival in estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer patients. J Clin Invest, 2010;120:3843-3854.
Martin DN, Mikhail IS, Landgren O. Autoimmunity and hematologic malignancies: associations and mechanisms. Leukemia and Lymphoma, 2009;50:541-550.
Martin DN, Boersma BJ, Yi M, Reimers M, Howe TM, Yfantis HG, Tsai YC, Williams EH, Lee DH, Stephens RM, Weissman AM, Ambs S. Differences in the tumor microenvironment between African-American and European-American breast cancer patients. PLOS One, 2009;4:e4531.
Martin DN, Boersma BJ, Howe TM, Goodman JE, Prueitt RL, Chanock S, Ambs S. Association of MTHFR gene polymorphisms with breast cancer survival. BMC Cancer 2006;6:257.
