Azare doing her part to battle breast cancer

Janeen R. Azare is doing her part to fight and help cure breast cancer.

Azare, 40, is living in New York City and is a Medical Science Liaison with Abraxis Oncology - a company that manufactures and sells a drug that is created to fight metastatic breast cancer.

“My function is help educate the scientific rationale with our drug,” she said.

Azare, a 1986 Abbeville High graduate, has the challenge of trying to convince Oncology doctors to use her company’s drug in the battle of breast cancer. Any doctor in the New York, and Boston area, she will interact with them about the drug.

“Physicians are willing and most of the time, they request us to come in,” she added. “A sales person can only talk about what our drug was approved for such as metastatic breast cancer.”

Although she is not doing research to help find a cure for breast cancer or treating patients who have breast cancer, Azare said there are many reasons why she enjoys her job.

“My self satisfaction is if I can help get the knowledge about our drug and what it can do,” she said. “If they use it in the patient population and it helps save a life, that is my self satisfaction. If it helps the patient at the end of the day, that is what keeps me moving forward with my job.”

Being in medicine is what Azare has wanted to do since high school. At first, when she graduated from high school and attended college at Xavier in New Orleans, she was going there to be a doctor.

“When I first came out of high school I first wanted to be a physician. I changed my major after I was exposed to research.”

It was then she fell in love with research.

“You understood what was going on versus actually just treating the patient,” she said.

Azare completed her undergraduate studies in New Orleans, at Xavier University and she earned a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology/Chemistry.

Growing up near “Cancer Alley” in southern Louisiana, Azare has always had a curiosity of what causes cancer.

Curiosity fueled her desire to make a contribution to the science of cancer by conducting research in the efficiency of transcription-targeted chemotherapy and oncogenesis.

Azare, a graduate of the New York University Medical Center (NYUMC) Nelson Institute of Environmental Medicine earned her Ph.D. in Environmental Health Sciences-Toxicology. While at NYUMC, Azare also received a Master of Philosophy in Environmental Health Sciences-Toxicology.

She has published her work in scientific peered reviewed journals and has served on several scientific committees. Azare is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research, American Public Health Association, American Society of Clinical Oncology, The New York Academy of Sciences, and the Society of Toxicology.

Although she may not find a cure for cancer, she is doing her part to make people’s lives better who have cancer.

Her favorite quote and source of challenge comes from Mahatma Ghandi: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

The Abbeville native is doing her part to make the world a better place.