OVARIAN CANCER
Our long term goal is to develop and clinically evaluate a novel strategy for inhibition of CSF-1 and/or c-fms function that will inhibit the invasive, metastatic phenotype in ovarian cancer patients. Epithelial ovarian cancer typically presents with widespread disease within the peritoneal cavity, with a 10-year patient survival of 15%. With the growing recognition of the impact of post-transcriptional gene regulation on cancer-related biological processes, we apply our multi-factorial expertise to the ovarian cancer problem, with a focus on RNA binding proteins and miRNAs.
BREAST CANCER
Our long-term goal is to decrease bone metastasis from breast cancer and help alleviate bone pain, to improve quality of life of patients with metastatic breast cancer. Bone metastases are common in women with metastatic breast cancer, resulting in bone destruction and rendering the patient largely incurable. As opposed to the case with many other solid tumors which have spread, breast cancer patients with bone spread can live many years. Ultimately 70% of those patients will develop skeletal complications including fractures and bone pain, severely impacting their quality of life. To work towards our goal, we will build upon work from our laboratory on regulation of breast cancer metastasis by the c-fms proto-oncogene.