If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the
results of a hundred battles....Sun Tzu
The Disease
Breast cancer is the 2nd leading cause of female cancer-related deaths in Canada. Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a prevalent and the most aggressive breast cancer subtype that leads to the poorest outcomes, largely due to the lack of biomarkers and commonly observed resistance to treatment. Breast cancer cells change their molecules to grow, while cells surrounding cancer also change to fight it better and to not let it spread. In the most aggressive, triple-negative, subtype of breast cancer, or TNBC, this battlefield is often won by cancer, resulting in poor patient outcomes.
The Challenge
Our lack of knowledge as to how breast cancer and its surrounding cells change and interact with each other during the disease progression and development of the resistance to chemo and radiotherapy are the major roadblocks in developing more effective treatments. Our research aims at closing clinically important gaps through the identification of new molecular determinants of breast cancer and TNBC progression and resistance to nonadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) that can be utilized as therapeutic and prognostic biomarkers to improve patient care and outcomes. Discovering new molecules, or biomarkers, that are related to TNBC metastases, and its drug resistance is thus critical, and is the overarching goal of our research. We also work on testing novel drugs and their combinations with radiotherapy to develop better treatments for breast cancer patients.
Our Research
Our multiple research pipelines include:
- Utilization of patient-derived culture systems to understand responses to novel and existing chemotherapeutics and radiotherapy.
- Using CRISP-Cas9 and other gene editing technologies to identify mechanisms of breast cancer resistance and progressiona and to identify novel biomarkers.
- We utilize cutting-edge spatial omics-based platforms for capturing molecular signatures to find changes in TNBC and surrounding immune cells at the whole genome level. In analogy with space telescopes, this approach provides an unprecedented look at the universe of cancer molecular changes to discover new biomarkers, that we can use to revolutionize TNBC treatment and brings us closer to the ultimate goal of Precision Oncology, in which these molecular signatures can guide clinical treatment decisions.
Overall, our research intends to bring breast cancer care closer to the desired goal of Precision Oncology, especially applicable for such a heterogeneous disease as TNBC. As shown for other breast cancer subtypes, discoveries of biomarkers (e.g. the Her2 receptor) have led to revolutionary changes in patient management, drug development, and health care. Our research seeks to provide comparable levels of impact on breast cancer and TNBC patient care and health care systems.
