Dr. Yaghjyan is a cancer epidemiologist with expertise in molecular and environmental epidemiology. Specifically, she is interested in studying early stages of breast carcinogenesis by focusing on high-risk phenotypes such as high mammographic breast density and benign breast disease, with an ultimate goal of offering novel primary breast cancer prevention strategies.

Dr. Yaghjyan's current R01 project aims to explore associations of several known breast cancer risk factors (including reproductive history, early-life body weight, and insulin-like growth factor pathway) with the expression of selected breast stem cell markers (CD44, CD24, and ALDH1A1) in benign breast biopsy samples. The project also aims to determine if these markers could be used to predict the risk of subsequent breast cancer in women diagnosed with benign breast disease (BBD). Currently there are no molecular markers for defining BBD subtypes for tailored treatment or risk prediction/prevention. Clinical management is based on clinicopathological features that are lacking reproducibility, resulting in controversial clinical management guidelines that vary across institutions and lead to under- or overtreatment of women with BBD. Further, women classified as "low-risk" based on this approaches still remain at 40-95% greater risk of breast cancer. The project aims to offer marker-based risk prediction/personalized follow-up in women with BBD and to lay a foundation for primary breast cancer prevention through tailored preventive stem cell-directed therapies.

Dr. Yaghjyan first became interested in this field when she was seeking to find an answer to the question "Why does breast tissue become dense and what molecular features of dense breast tissue may drive an increase in breast cancer risk?"