Coral Omene is a medical oncologist who has a passion for women’s health and is dedicated to the care of treating and managing a diverse pool of breast cancer patients. She cares deeply about the well-being of her patients and works with a multidisciplinary team at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey to achieve the best care possible, encompassing the medical, social, and emotional aspects, for each patient.

She is site principal investigator for multiple industry and cooperative group breast cancer clinical trials. She believes that clinical trials are an important tool to improve patient outcomes and routinely discusses clinical trial options with her patients. She is co-chair of the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium breast cancer clinical trial working group.

Omene completed a combined MD/PhD degree at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. For the PhD program, she studied the functional characterization of the interaction between the breast cancer gene product BRCA1 and the protein BARD1, which influenced her lifelong interest in breast cancer. She completed an internal medicine residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia University Medical Center, where she was fascinated by triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), a challenging breast cancer subtype, and the lack of effective therapies, especially given its predisposition for young Black women. She subsequently pursued a hematology/oncology fellowship with a special interest in breast cancer at New York University School of Medicine.

Over the years, her research interests have focused on TNBC. Currently, she is studying tumor biology changes in response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in Black women with TNBC and the interplay with host factors, such as obesity, that impact on cancer disparities. Her goal is the development of interventional strategies, via clinical trials, in these populations receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy that may help close the disparity gap.