Breast Cancer Discovery Group

The goal of the breast cancer Discovery group is to foster a multidisciplinary approach for the design of strategies to prevent breast cancer, detect early stages of the disease, and provide new therapies for breast cancer. To achieve this goal researchers from different disciplines bring expertise in engineering and imaging, molecular biology and pharmacology, cell biology and breast tissue models, and chemistry, to increase the knowledge necessary to prevent breast cancer development and progression. The breast cancer discovery group is committed to working across disciplines and collaborating with clinicians to develop translational studies.

Breast Cancer Discovery Group members:

Ignacio Camarillo, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences
Obesity is a major concern and is associated with breast cancer incidence, tumor invasiveness and higher cancer morbidity rates. The goals of this research are to 1) determine the relationship between early onset obesity and breast cancer aggressiveness, 2) identify mechanisms of adipocyte-derived hormones on breast cancer progression and drug resistance and 3) better understand the impact of diet and obesity on mammary tissue and tumor microenvironment.

Ji-Xin Cheng, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Ji-Xin Cheng is devoted to highly interdisciplinary research that advances the potential of ex-vivo and   in-vivo nonlinear optical imaging in mechanistic understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases. By imaging tumor-stroma interactions in diet-induced-obesity rats bearing methylnitrosourea-induced mammary tumor, Cheng is poised to unravel molecular mechanisms linking high-fat diet with breast cancer risk.

Robert Geahlen, Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology
In breast cancer, tumor progression involves the activation of growth promoting oncogenes and the inactivation of tumor suppressor genes. Understanding the products of these genes and the pathways in which they function is essential for understanding the process of tumorigenesis and for the development of therapeutic strategies. The Syk protein-tyrosine kinase has recently been identified as a tumor suppressor in breast cancer and the goal of our research is to gain an understanding of how Syk functions to suppress the malignant phenotype of breast cancer cells.

Joseph Irudayaraj, Associate Professor of Biological Engineering
Dr. Irudayaraj’s research focuses on developing multifunctional nanomaterials for simultaneous tumor targeting, drug delivery, and photothermal treatment of breast cancer. He is also applying single molecule imaging tools to track intracellular receptor dynamics and nanomaterial target interaction in different compartments in single cells as well as in in vivo models to study biological mechanisms related to cancer development.

Julia Kirshner, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences
Dr. Kirshner’s laboratory is actively investigating the role of microenvironment in maintaining the balance between self-renewal and differentiation of cancer stem cells. In addition to generating tumors, a cancer stem cell possesses characteristics of normal stem cells including proliferative quiescence and self-renewal potential. Patients suffering from both hematological malignancies and solid tumors often see their disease relapse due to the inability of the currently used therapies to target successfully cancer stem cells. Thus, determining which characteristics of the cancer stem cells can be therapeutically exploited is of utmost importance.

Deborah Knapp, McCall Professor of Veterinary Medicine, Oncology Program
EphA2 is a receptor tyrosine kinase which is over-expressed in aggressive and metastatic breast cancer. EphA2 may hold some of the keys for improving therapy for breast cancer. Due to its preferential over-expression on transformed cells as compared to non-transformed cells, it is an attractive target for developing improved therapy. One of the focuses of Dr. Knapp’s research is to understand the regulation of EphA2 and to exploit its over-expression to develop more effective, targeted therapy. 

James Leary, Professor of Basic Medical Sciences and Biomedical Engineering
Dr. Leary is finding new methods for breast cancer diagnostics and therapeutics using nanomedicine techniques.  Peptide- and antibody-guided nanomedical systems containing drugs or genes for therapy are being developed and tested in animals. The cores of these nanomedical systems are magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents, so improved diagnostics should come simultaneously with improved therapeutics. These systems should allow for better targeting of cancer therapies to tumor cells with fewer side effects to normal cells.

Sophie Lelièvre, Associate Professor of Cancer Pharmacology
Dr. Lelièvre’s breast cancer research focuses on the role of cell nucleus organization in gene expression and genome stability, and the relationship between tissue architecture and functions of the cell nucleus. Translational projects derived from basic research performed in the laboratory are targeted towards early detection and prevention of breast cancer.  

Suresh Mittal, Professor of Comparative Pathology
Overexpression of the receptor tyrosine kinase, EphA2, occurs in the majority of invasive breast cancers, and successful binding of its ligand Ephrin-A1 has been shown to restore normal cellular functions. In normal breast cells and other adult epithelial cells, EphA2 is expressed at considerably low levels and is associated with its ligand, whereas, in breast cancer cells EphA2 is overexpressed and its significant amounts are not associated with its ligand. Dr. Mittal is focusing on the fact that EphA2 provides a unique cancer cell target for breast cancer intervention by adenoviral vectors. 

Sulma Mohammed, Associate Professor of Cancer Biology
One of Dr. Mohammed’s research focus in on identification of specific and sensitive biomarkers for early detection of breast cancer. Her laboratory employs laser capture microdissection, proteomics, and nanotechnologies to determine differences in proteins' expression profiles between tumor and normal cells and to identify differentially expressed proteins. The proteins can be used as biomarkers for cancer detection and as targets for therapeutic intervention..

Nagendra Prasad, Assistant Professor of Basic Medical Sciences
Obesity is a cancer risk factor; chances of developing breast cancer are elevated in post-menopausal obese women and obese patients develop more aggressive breast cancers. Dr. Prasad’s research involves studying a novel idea that a gene called SHIP2 could link obesity and breast cancer. His research is aiming to determine the mechanisms of SHIP2 function in oncogenesis, especially in conferring obesity-related cancer risk.  For more information visit website.

Daniel Raftery, Professor of Analytical and Physical Chemistry
The  Raftery Group uses and develops advanced methods in metabolomics for the discovery of early biomarkers of breast cancer. The emerging area of metabolomics describes the simultaneous detection and quantitative measurement of a large number of metabolites in biological samples such as normal and pathological tissue and bio-fluids. Detection of multiple metabolites, which are the end products of a multitude of genomic and proteomic functions promise immense applications in early diagnosis, prognosis and molecular level understanding of metabolic pathways associated with breast cancer

David Riese, Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology
Dr. Riese’s research focuses on the effects of increased and decreased ErbB4 signaling in breast tumor cell lines.  Dr. Riese’s group is investigating the effects of changes in ErbB receptor expression on chemotherapy sensitivity and resistance. This group is also developing novel ligand-based antagonists for ErbB receptors and evaluating the anti-tumor activities of these agents.
  
Cynthia Stauffacher, Professor of Biological Sciences
Dr. Stuaffacher’s laboratory studies macromolecular structure and assembly using X-ray crystallography with a particular focus on membrane associated proteins, and enzyme structure and function.

Dorothy Teegarden, Professor of Foods & Nutrition
Dr. Teegarden focuses on the effect of nutrients in regulating the progression of cancer.  Vitamin D has been positively associated with reduced risk of cancers, including breast.  Currently, she is studying the signaling mechanisms employed by the active form of vitamin D, 1,25 dihydroxyvitamin D, to regulate cell growth, apoptosis and angiogenesis in models for multistage carcinogenesis to better understand the potential of vitamin D as a chemopreventive agent.

Alexander Wei, Professor of Chemistry
Dr. Wei is working on a project to use gold nanorods as imaging agents for optical coherence tomography (OCT), which is essentially an optical version of ultrasound but with higher spatial resolution. In addition, one of the other focuses of his laboratory is to develop in vitro (and later in vivo) cell-based assays for studying early-stage breast cancer, involving the correlation of viscoelastic changes in cells and tissues during malignant transformations, and the arrest of malignant proliferation with non-cytotoxic agents (e.g., neutraceuticals).

For information regarding the Breast Cancer Discovery Group, please contact the group leader, Dr. Sophie Lelievre at lelievre@purdue.edu.

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