Explore HER2 in breast cancer treatment response

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Research of the Cancer Institute of New Jersey (CINJ) on biological pathways presented progression and responsiveness to treatment of HER2 positive breast cancer rules found on the 102nd Annual meeting of the American Association for cancer research (AACR) in Orlando of this week. CINJ is a centre of excellence of UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson medical school.

The focus of this poster presentation is the protein known as human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2/neu) and what role it plays in breast cancer aggressiveness, poor clinical outcome and chemotherapy resistance. About 30 percent of breast cancers have high levels of the HER2 protein.

This current research by Fred Lozy, a member of Dr. Vassiliki Karantza laboratory in CINJ, lead investigator finds that producing under stress conditions, the presence of too much HER2 causes a decrease in the Autophagy that. Autophagy is an energy recycling process, which helps cells survive, but can go also wrong under certain conditions and result in tumor formation. Usually a decline in this process would hamper ability, survival to a cell; However, use of laboratory models and gene found profiling expression in this case, was and gentlemen, that these cells change other cellular processes to compensate for the lack of Autophagy. As a result, changes in these cellular processes can increase breast cancer growth, metastasis, and/or enable the disease to chemotherapy resistant to.

"Changed paths identify an important step, which can help scientists discover how breast cancer progresses and find new targets for breast cancer cancer therapies," was noticed, which also a PhD student in the joint graduate program in cell and developmental biology at UMDNJ-graduate school of Biomedical Sciences at Robert Wood Johnson medical school and RutgersDer State University of New Jersey.

Other researchers are Anupama Reddy, PhD, Rutgers University; Gregory miles, MS, CINJ and UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson medical school. GYAN Bhanot, PhD, CINJ, and Rutgers University; Shridar Ganesan, MD, PhD, CINJ and UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson medical school. Vassiliki Karantza, MD, PhD, CINJ and UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson medical school.

The work was awarded to the New Jersey Commission on cancer research supports.

The research of CINJ represented counts more than 6,000 extracts of the collection, the researchers, healthcare professionals members and participation introduces patient advocates. The event is open to registered participants.

Source:
Cancer Institute of New Jersey