Wash U receives $5M grant to research treatment of hard-to-treat breast cancers
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis will receive a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) to conduct research on HER2-positive breast cancer.
Drug therapies have improved survival rates in HER2 cases, which comprise 20 percent of breast cancers. The DOD grant will fund a clinical trial at Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Hospital examining the efficacy of neratibin, a HER2 blocker.
“We’re figuring out how to treat breast cancer based on the mutations present in the specific patient’s tumor,” said co-principal investigator Ron Bose, MD, PhD, an associate professor of medicine, in a May 10 release from Washington University. “We’ve developed a diagnostic test for mutations in HER2 that cause overactive signaling, and we have a good drug for patients with these mutations in their tumors. These new diagnostic and therapeutic tools may let us identify more women with HER2-driven cancers and treat them with HER2 inhibitors.”
Researchers will implant patient tumor cells into mice, which will be treated with various pharmaceutical therapies. They will also perform genome sequencing and protein analysis to explore how some tumors are capable of evading drug treatments.
“In a past clinical trial, we tested neratinib alone, and we saw that about 30 percent of patients had a positive therapeutic benefit from the drug,” said co-principle investigator Cynthia X. Ma, MD, PhD, an associate professor of medicine. “Now, we want to see whether adding fulvestrant will improve that outcome and help more patients.”
Nicholas joined TriMed in 2016 as the managing editor of the Chicago office. After receiving his master’s from Roosevelt University, he worked in various writing/editing roles for magazines ranging in topic from billiards to metallurgy. Currently on Chicago’s north side, Nicholas keeps busy by running, reading and talking to his two cats.