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Breast Cancer Program
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in the United States, other than skin cancer. The chance of a woman having invasive breast cancer at some point is about 1 in 8. It is the second leading cause of cancer death in women, after lung cancer.
Identifying a new way to fight breast cancer: Although tamoxifen cuts the recurrence of breast cancer by half in post-menopausal women with estrogen sensitive breast cancer, it may be less effective in some pre-menopausal women with estrogen sensitive breast cancer. Dr. Doris Germain (Mount Sinai Medical Center) has explained how the presence of tamoxifen may amplify the effect of certain proteins that control cell growth. Her laboratory is now investigating an alternative approach for those pre-menopausal women and for all women resistant to tamoxifen, using two drugs which already have FDA-approval, fulvestrant (Faslodex) and bortezomib (Velcade). Because the drugs are already on the market, this research could lead more quickly to an exciting new anti-hormonal treatment for breast cancers which resist existing medicines.
Promising Approach to Preventing Breast Cancer: Vitamin A significantly inhibited the growth of some breast cancer cells in the laboratory, but not in clinical trial patients. Dr. Lillian Ossowski and Dr. Eduardo Farias (both at Mount Sinai Medical Center) demonstrated that the loss of effect was due to a decrease in Vitamin A receptors in the breast cancer cells and investigated ways to overcome that. They then studied the protective effect of a form of Vitamin A in mice genetically engineered to develop 2 different types of breast cancer. This derivative was more effective than Vitamin A, showing a significant reduction in the overall incidence of cancer and an increase in cancer-free survival.
Identifying high risk breast cancer patients with a very poor prognosis: Here is an exciting example of how the close collaboration in the Institute Without Walls speeds the pace of research by encouraging the application of insights gained in research on one kind of cancer to another kind of cancer. In studying how to predict the prognosis of breast cancer patients, Dr. Julio Aguirre-Ghiso (Mount Sinai Medical Center) is applying knowledge about genes that have been found to induce head and neck cancer cells to become dormant. He is investigating a particular gene to determine whether the level of activity predicts the breast cancer patient’s condition in five years. Risk identification like this is critical to taking protective measures. This study correlated historical data about the genes in a tumor with information on a patient’s actual disease activity. The next step is to investigate specifically how the gene determines cell behavior in order to identify where a drug can be applied to reprogram the cells to behave like normal cells.
Melanoma Cancer Programs 
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