The University of Illinois Cancer Center has named Kent Hoskins, MD, as Associate Director for Translational Research.
Hoskins, whose research is focused on breast cancer, genetics, risk assessment and racial disparities, has been a Cancer Center member since 2012 and is the Eileen Lindsay Heidrick Professor in Oncology and a Professor of Medicine in the division of Hematology and Oncology at the University of Illinois College of Medicine.
Hoskins’ Breast Cancer Research at the Cancer Center
Hoskins, as the director of the UI Health Familial Breast Cancer Program in the Division of Hematology/Oncology and co-Lead of the Hereditary Cancer group in the Cancer Center, focuses on the assessment of breast cancer risk. Utilizing both population studies and behavioral and molecular approaches, he has focused his cancer research on developing strategies to reduce breast cancer mortality by better identifying high-risk individuals.
He also examines the health disparity in breast cancer mortality between African American women and those of other racial and ethnic groups, paying particular attention to the roles of social determinants of health and disproportionately aggressive tumor biology among African American women.
Cancer Research and Reducing Health Disparities at the Cancer Center
In his work, Hoskins strives to understand the ethical, psychosocial and behavioral issues in personalized medicine and cancer risk prediction for minority women. Before taking on the role of Associate Director for Translational Research, he co-led the Breast Cancer Working Group in the Cancer Center and established several racially diverse biospecimen resources that are now widely used by Cancer Center members.
He is also actively involved in developing clinical trials in breast cancer and in developing novel approaches for analyzing biospecimens collected from clinical trial participants to identify mechanisms of drug resistance. Hoskins is board-certified in Medical Oncology.