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- Posted Wednesday September 7, 2011
TGen receives $50,000 to find genetic origins of rare breast cancer
Inflammatory Breast Cancer strikes without warning and
progresses rapidly
PHOENIX, Ariz. - Sept. 7, 2011 - The Inflammatory Breast Cancer
Research Foundation (IBCRF) has awarded $50,000 to the
Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) to discover the
genetic origins of this rare and most deadly form of breast
cancer.
Unlike other types of breast cancer, Inflammatory Breast Cancer
(IBC) is very often misdiagnosed, and rapidly progresses to an
advanced stage, said Dr. Heather Cunliffe, Head of TGen's Breast
& Ovarian Cancer Research Unit.
"No one knows what causes IBC and what drives the aggressive nature
of this disease," Dr. Cunliffe said. "You can wake up one morning
and out of the blue your breast will be twice its normal size, red
and inflamed with full blown Inflammatory Breast Cancer."
As soon as it is diagnosed, patients typically start chemotherapy,
even before surgery, to try and reduce the rapid spread of the
disease, Dr. Cunliffe said. Still, there is no cure for IBC, which
represents less than 5 percent of all breast cancers.
TGen's interest in IBC began in 2006 after several Phoenix-area
women who developed the disease urged the institute to conduct
research.
"They shared about the work of the Inflammatory Breast Cancer
Research Foundation and suggested we might work together," said
Ginny Mason, Executive Director
of the IBCRF. "Since that introduction, there have been many
opportunities to partner with Dr. Cunliffe in her research.
Dr. Cunliffe's outstanding grant proposal, High-Resolution
Molecular Pathology to guide Rational Therapeutic Approaches for
Triple Negative Inflammatory Breast Cancer, addresses an important
aspect of inflammatory breast cancer research, and hopefully will
lead to identifying new targets for therapy."
Funding for this grant was made possible through a partnership
between the IBCRF (www.ibcresearch.org) and the Milburn Foundation
(www.milburngift.org), Mason said.
The $50,000 award will enable TGen to analyze DNA samples from IBC
tumors, to look for underlying genetic similarities that may
indicate a therapeutic vulnerability.
TGen researchers will zero in on the triple-negative (TN) form of
IBC. Triple-negative breast cancers are those that do not express
clinically significant levels of estrogen receptor (ER),
progesterone receptor (PfR) or human epidermal growth factor 2
(HER2).
"It is critical that we discover the molecular and biologic
underpinnings driving the highly aggressive behavior of TN-IBC
tumors," Dr. Cunliffe said.
A significant confounding problem in IBC research is that cells
within an IBC tumor are mostly diffuse throughout the breast, mixed
with normal cells and a significant number of immune system cells,
Dr. Cunliffe said.
"This makes isolation of tumor-specific DNA samples for research
exceedingly difficult," Dr. Cunliffe said. "TGen's study will
leverage a technology developed in the laboratory of Dr. Michael
Barrett at TGen that solves this problem, allowing us to purify and
examine TN-IBC DNA accurately at high resolution without
contamination of DNA from normal healthy cells."
Dr. Cunliffe said she hopes to quickly translate TGen's laboratory
findings into new therapeutic approaches that will benefit TN-IBC
patients.
