Funmi Olopade on how life in Nigeria and South Side Chicago inspired her career in cancer genetics

Описание: Olufunmilayo “Funmi” Olopade, director for the Center for Clinical Cancer Genetics and Global Health at the University of Chicago, credits her Nigerian upbringing for her focus on global cancer genetics.

“My Yoruba culture really worships our ancestors and the people before us,” Olopade said on the Cancer History Project podcast. “And so that's why I was able to really say, ‘Okay, let's lay the foundation for genetics. Let's go to Nigeria.""

Olopade appears on this special Black History Month episode of the Cancer History Project Podcast in conversation with Robert A. Winn, director and Lipman Chair in Oncology at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center and guest editor for The Cancer Letter for Black History Month highlighting some of the giants in the field of cancer research.

Olopade is certainly a giant in cancer genetics and global health.
“For those of you who don't know, Dr. Olopade is not only the director of the Center for Clinical Cancer Genetics and Global Health at the University of Chicago, but she is really a giant in the field and internationally renowned in the context of her expertise in breast cancer,” Winn said on the podcast. “By the way, for those of you who thought you knew Dr. Olopade, remember that she is a really rare, not only National Academy, but in that top 1% of 1% of the 2025 MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the Genius Grant.”

On this episode of the Cancer History Project Podcast, Olopade shares her story of immigrating to the U.S. from Nigeria to pursue medicine, and finding her way to becoming a leading expert in oncology.
“For us to honor Black History Month, we have to honor all the people who mentored us, who were ahead of us,” Olopade said. “For me, my father was a pastor, and my parents really wanted a doctor. I had big brothers and sisters, I was number 5 of 6 children, and there was just one last chance to find a doctor in the family. Because in those days, growing up in Nigeria, you were either a teacher or a pastor, or and then in his generation he became a pastor.”

Growing up in Nigeria, Olopade was deeply influenced by the health disparities she saw due to lack of healthcare access, which initially sparked an interest in cardiology.

“So, coming to America, what I thought I was going to do was cardiology, because all I saw when I was in medical school were children with rheumatic heart disease,” Olopade said. “They had damaged their heart from not getting access to penicillin.

“Then I got to [Cook] County, and we were having people who had heart attacks. We were saving people in the critical care unit, and then we're asking people to change their lifestyle. I thought, oh well, that seems solved.”
After pivoting to hematology and oncology, her focus on community drew her attention to the health disparities present among her neighbors in Chicago.

“That's when we started talking about triple negative breast cancer,” she said. “Because if you just look at all the women who were walking into my door, why is it that these Black women were coming in with young onset, triple negative breast cancer, and no one was studying it?”
When Olopade first moved to Chicago, she had been advised to avoid living on the south side—a racially loaded monition common to Chicago, which is known for being heavily segregated. As a young mother, Olopade moved her family to the suburbs, but struggled with the commute to the University of Chicago, which is on the south side.

She credits her decision to move to Hyde Park, the neighborhood surrounding the university which is also famous for being home to Barack and Michelle Obama, as a source of inspiration for her research.
“When you have such greatness, when you have Michelle Obama and Barack Obama as your neighbors who are thinking about great things, you cannot but think about the community and that community influences you,” Olopade said. “All of them wanting to make the south side of Chicago the place to come to and, of course, the University of Chicago pushing us to do the best science. So, I've just been blessed, and that's why when people ask me ‘why are you still in cold Chicago?’ I'm like, where else can I go?”
Both globally and at home, Olopade saw the impact of bringing research to the community.
“I'm not going to move the women on the south side out of the south side, but I'm going to take trials to them,” Olopade said. “I'm not going to move everybody out of Nigeria, but I'm going to take research to them, and I'm going to do clinical trials there.

“I kept telling people, you can't all run out of Africa. We can't forget that there's so many billions of people on the planet who need our care. That's why I became really passionate, and I'm so happy that they have named global research after you, Robert Winn, because you can bring the money. I just talk about it.”

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