Research Challenges
Using state-of-the-art techniques and collaborative methods, our teams strive to address the following critical research challenges in breast cancer.
Mechanisms of breast cancer initiation and progression
About one in four breast cancer diagnoses begins as ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). While DCIS itself is not life‑threatening, in up to 40% of cases it can eventually develop into invasive breast cancer. Currently, there is no efficient method to predict which DCIS lesions will progress to invasive carcinoma, leading many patients to face unnecessary treatment and anxiety. Therefore, there is a critical need to understand the fundamental mechanisms by which DCIS progresses to effectively recognise patients at risk and to develop novel therapies. In Finbreast we are exploring the molecular mechanisms leading to initiation of malignant growth in DCIS and its progression into invasive carcinoma, specifically focusing on the interactions between malignant cells and the surrounding tissue microenvironment.
Targeting MYC to Defeat Drug-Resistant Breast Cancer
Finbreast’s mission is to uncover the oncogenic programs driving aggressive breast cancers and translate them into therapies that stop progression, overcome resistance, and improve survival. A key focus is the MYC oncogene, hyperactive in many triple-negative and luminal B tumors—both resistant to standard therapies and linked to poor prognosis. MYC promotes growth and drug resistance by rewiring metabolism, DNA repair, and pro-survival pathways. We investigate MYC-driven vulnerabilities, including dependence on oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS), to design synthetic lethal strategies that selectively kill resistant cancer cells while sparing healthy tissue. By transforming insights into MYC biology into actionable treatments, FinBreast advances new therapeutic options for the most hard-to-treat breast cancers.
Targeting mechanisms of malignancy
The most lethal form of cancer occurs when the tumour cells leave the primary site and colonise distant organs, which for breast cancers typically include the bones, brain, liver or lungs. While most patients treated for early-stage breast cancer do not go on to develop metastatic disease, for those that do, there are currently no effective therapies. Thus, there is a clear need to understand the root causes of metastatic dissemination to allow improved stratification of patients with biomarkers for disseminated disease, as well as to better understand the changes that cancer cells undergo to guide the development of novel anti-metastatic compounds to prevent progression to these later disease stages.