With black men two-and-half times more likely to die from prostate cancer and Jamaican men having one of the highest incidences of the cancer in the world, trailblazing Jamaican scientist, Dr Simone Badal, has dedicated her life to research that is aimed at developing better treatments, including drugs to fight cancer among black people.

Her research is also tailored to the fact that black women are more prone to developing triple-negative breast cancer, the most aggressive form, and have the highest mortality rate. Badal’s work takes on even more significant meaning considering that more than 90 per cent of the Jamaican population is black.

Badal is undaunted by the task at hand, she dares to make a difference. The harder the task, the more determined she is to succeed. That fixity of purpose has led to her groundbreaking work in cancer research that will redound to the benefit of black people in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean. Her findings mean treatments can now be tailored made for this specific group.

Badal’s list of achievements is impressive. The graduate of Meadowbrook High School in St Andrew, where she fell in love with the sciences, is a senior lecturer in the biochemistry department at the UWI. She is also an editorial board member of the Journal of Cancer Science and Clinical Research and the American International Journal of Biology. She has lectured at the University of Technology where she spearheaded the delivery of the pharmacognosy course to second-year pharmacy students.

Her biggest achievement to date has come from her unrelenting work at the Anti-Cancer Research Jamaica (ACRJ) Foundation which she founded in 2014 with a determination to develop a cell line for prostate cancer in black men.

After several years of diligent work at the ACRJ Cell Culture Lab, which is located on the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies, Badal developed the first prostate cancer cell line from the Caribbean dubbed ACRJ-PC28. The development was groundbreaking.

Cell lines are taken from the body and can be manipulated outside the body. Scientists can grow them for long periods while observing what is happening in cancer cells and normal cells. This is crucial to developing more effective drugs.

Before Badal’s breakthrough, only white cell lines for white men were available.

“During my research into the efficacy of some promising Jamaican compounds in possible cancer treatment I realised that there was a lot of disparity in cancer research. For example, the cell lines that I used in my research to test these compounds were all from caucasian individuals,” Badal shared.

She was determined to change this.

“That led me to where I am today, developing black cancer cell lines from the Caribbean so we can have better representation,” she added.

Badal noted that when drugs are being developed, having these black Caribbean cell lines “will help us to develop drugs that are more effective against cancers in black people”.

Badal is gearing up to publish her first book, ‘No Cell Left Behind’ with BambuSparks.

The impact of the trailblazing Jamaican scientist was evident when in 2020 she received an NIH Emerging Global Leader Award of over US$500,000. That funding, she said, is helping with advancing prostate cancer cell line development and in expanding the facilities at the lab.

In 2014 she was one of five winners of the Elsevier Foundation Awards for early career women scientists in the developing world. The awards were presented at the annual AAAS meeting in Chicago.