Dr. Hadiyah-Nicole Green is among the first African American women to earn a PhD in physics. She holds three degrees in physics from Alabama A&M University and completed her master’s and doctorate at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Before she turned her attention to oncology, she interned at NASA calibrating lasers for the International Space Station and studied at the University of Rochester Institute of Optics.
She is currently an assistant professor at Morehouse School of Medicine and the founder of the Ora Lee Smith Cancer Research Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to making her cancer treatment affordable and accessible to patients worldwide. The pivot from physics to cancer research was personal. Both her aunt and uncle, who raised her, were diagnosed with cancer. She served as the primary caregiver for both. Watching them endure the physical toll of chemotherapy and radiation is what set the direction of her career.
How Green's treatment works
The treatment Dr. Green developed uses nanoparticles activated by a laser. Each component is harmless on its own, but when combined and exposed to laser light inside the body, the nanoparticles generate heat that destroys cancer cells at the tumor site. The process is physical rather than chemical. In lab tests on mice with solid tumors, the treatment eliminated cancer in 15 days following a single 10-minute session, with no observable side effects.
The distinction from conventional treatment is significant. Chemotherapy and radiation circulate through the entire body, which is why they cause widespread damage. Dr. Green’s approach targets only the tumor site directly. She has described the difference as the contrast between a weapon that destroys everything in range and one that takes out a single target with precision.
The technology is designed to treat a range of solid tumors, including breast, prostate, skin, head and neck, colorectal and brain cancers. On the recommendation of her consultants, the FDA and a VA grant review panel, she plans to begin human trials with skin cancer before moving to head and neck.
Green’s FDA designation and the funding gap
In 2024, the FDA granted Dr. Green’s treatment a Breakthrough Device Designation, a classification the agency reserves for developments it considers promising enough to prioritize through the approval process. For a small nonprofit competing in a regulatory environment built around large pharmaceutical companies with billions in resources, the designation is consequential. It removes bureaucratic barriers and establishes a direct path toward human trial approval.
The paperwork required to begin those trials is complete. What is missing is the money to run them.
Dr. Green has received two federal grants from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The first, awarded in 2016, was a $1.1 million career development grant. The second, which she had not previously disclosed publicly, totals $1.2 million and provides infrastructure to house her first human trials at a VA facility along with several years of salary support. Together, those grants bring the total raised to approximately $2.3 million against a project estimated to cost around $100 million. She calculates the current shortfall at roughly $4 million to begin the first phase of human trials.
In the 10 years since founding her cancer charity, Dr. Green has never drawn a salary from donations. Operating costs have come out of her own income from her faculty position and speaking engagements.
What Green needs and why it matters for Black communities
Black Americans are diagnosed with cancer at later stages at disproportionate rates, a pattern Dr. Green ties directly to longstanding medical mistrust rooted in historical abuses including the Tuskegee Experiment and the case of Henrietta Lacks. She sees her independence as a researcher from the community as part of what makes her work different.
The Ora Lee Smith Cancer Research Foundation is currently accepting donations and volunteers at OraLee.org. Dr. Green has stated that fundraising should not be what stands between a functional cancer treatment and the patients who need it.
