CHAPEL HILL -- A new study that may help improve scientists' understanding of breast cancer, including why more black women than white women die from it, is getting under way in 44 counties in North Carolina.

The project, named after Durham's Jeanne Hopkins Lucas, a North Carolina state senator who died of breast cancer last year, is being run by UNC's Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The research is an extension of the Carolina Breast Cancer Study, one of the largest breast cancer databases in the United States.

Potential participants will be identified as participating hospitals report newly diagnosed breast cancer cases to the North Carolina Central Cancer Registry. Using a scientifically selected study sample, UNC researchers will contact the physician of record prior to contacting the patient about the study.

"Black women under the age of 50 have a high mortality rate from breast cancer, almost twice that of younger white women," said Robert Millikan, Barbara Sorensen Hulka Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. "We will address this pressing health disparity by enlarging upon the Carolina Breast Cancer Study, which enrolled over 2,300 women with breast cancer and 2,000 control subjects between 1993 and 2001."

One of the Lucas study's primary aims is to investigate subtypes of breast cancer, continuing discoveries made by the Carolina Breast Cancer Study. Data from the existing study were key to a 2006 finding that premenopausal black breast cancer patients have the highest prevalence of a subtype of breast cancer called "basal like" cancer.

"Between now and 2012 we will enroll an additional 1,000 black women with newly diagnosed cases of invasive breast cancer -- half under the age of 50 and half aged 50 and older -- and a similar number and distribution of white women with breast cancer," Millikan said. "The Lucas study will more than double the number of black breast cancer patients in the original study. We will also follow the 2,000 women for two years following diagnosis to examine disparities in treatment and access to care."

No treatment of any kind will be given as part of the study. Participants will be interviewed in their homes by trained nurses regarding breast cancer risk factors, and a DNA blood sample will be taken to help determine factors that women with breast cancer have in common. Researchers will also request patients' permission to access their medical records relating to breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.