A physician-scientist from Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey who is studying ways to advance the molecular understanding of breast cancer has received a $181,000 grant to further this research with the aim of identifying new treatment approaches for more aggressive forms of the disease. Vassiliki Karantza, M.D., Ph.D. was awarded the 2014 Breast Cancer Research Foundation-American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Grant for Translational Breast Cancer Research at the Annual Meeting of the AACR held recently in San Diego.
Dr. Karantza’s laboratory explores the cellular self-preservation process of autophagy as it relates to breast cancer development and treatment.According to the AACR, Karantza was selected to receive the award for her overall accomplishments in the field and based on the relevance of the proposed project to AACR’s mission, and a belief that it will have a significant impact. Karantza’s team previously discovered in laboratory models that the absence of a copy of the Beclin1 gene — an autophagy regulator — leads to the activation of biological pathways known to promote breast tumor formation. They also found that loss of this gene accelerates breast cancer tumor development in cooperation with another cancer-promoting gene known as WNT1.Through this work, investigators identified a subgroup of breast cancer patients whose tumors have similar characteristics, namely low levels of Beclin1 and activation of the WNT biological pathway.These patients typically have a poor prognosis and their tumors are primarily triple-negative breast cancers, which are generally difficult to treat.
The new research will examine drugs and drug combinations that can target the tumor-promoting mechanisms of Beclin1 and WNT1, as well as develop laboratory techniques that can determine which breast cancer patients have tumors with these particular characteristics and are most likely to benefit from targeted treatments.
“Several aggressive forms of breast cancer, including triple-negative, typically do not respond favorably to standard treatment regimens, thus it is imperative that new targeted therapy options are identified so that treatment outcomes for this patient population can be improved,” noted Karantza, who is also an assistant professor of medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.“It is a privilege to receive this award from the AACR and Breast Cancer Research Foundation in order to further explore this possibility.”
The award will fund Karantza’s work for a two-year period beginning this July.