Edinburgh Breast Cancer Research Group

Aim

By studying molecular profiles from biopsies taken from tumours responding or resistant to hormonal treatment, we hope to discover markers of response and identify pathways involved in endocrine resistance. About a third of breast cancers do not respond to hormonal treatment despite having oestrogen receptors.  The plan is to develop new molecular markers to complement existing clinical criteria to allow better selection of patients for endocrine therapy.

Overview

Recent advances and the development of novel research tools, such as micro-arrays and new bio-informatics analyses, allow simultaneous assessment of comprehensively complex molecular processes.  This approach should permit development of molecular signatures to assess prognosis in individual breast cancer patients and to classify tumours, which are apparently similar on clinical assessment, into molecularly distinctive classes. 

We plan to apply these tools to study hormonal resistance in breast cancer.  We believe that simultaneous analysis of mRNA, micro-RNA, DNA and protein extracted from the same clinical specimen will provide new information, which will allow identification of markers to select patients who are sensitive to hormone therapy.  Findings that come from the clinical specimens will be analysed in conjunction with data obtained on experimental models of endocrine resistance from other teams in Edinburgh Breakthrough Research Unit.