Developing more effective treatments for breast cancer

Thanks to research, more people are surviving breast cancer than ever before. But the challenge is far from over. There are still too few treatments, and current treatments are not effective for all breast cancers.
 
We urgently need new and better ways to treat breast cancer – giving more people more precious time to live.

Changes in breast cancer’s genes can help the cancer to grow and spread. But sometimes, these changes can be hidden weaknesses that, when we use drugs to target them, can destroy the cancer cell. 

Chris and Andrew are experts in finding, and targeting, weaknesses in breast cancers. They aim to use their knowledge to improve current treatments and find new ones for people with breast cancer.

Chris, Andrew and their team are focusing on 4 main projects:

1. Understanding and overcoming resistance to PARP inhibitors
   

   Changes in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes help breast cancer cells to survive. At the same time, these changes also cause weaknesses in cancer cells. One of these weaknesses means that breast cancer cells with BRCA1 or BRCA2 alterations can be killed using drugs called PARP inhibitors. 
   
   PARP inhibitor treatment can be lifesaving, but not all tumours respond. This is because some breast cancer cells are resistant to the drug. The team previously found a genetic change in 60% of breast cancers that are resistant – so they’re now investigating ways to target this change with other treatments.
   
   They also want to understand what else causes resistance to PARP inhibitors, and why it can happen in early breast cancer. And they want to investigate how treatment responses vary between types of breast cancer with changes in the BRCA genes.
   In the future, this project could lead to new ways to overcome breast cancer’s resistance to PARP inhibitors.
   
   Part of this work, with a particular focus on triple negative breast cancers that don’t respond to treatments given before surgery, is carried out at the Breast Cancer Now Research Unit at King’s College London. To do this they will study samples from people with breast cancer as well as mice. 
   
   

2. Understanding how turning off the BRCA1 gene changes triple negative breast cancers
   

   Some people develop breast cancer not because they have inherited a  change in the BRCA1 gene, but because the BRCA1 gene has been turned off. Although PARP inhibitors are now used to treat women with changes in BRCA1 or BRCA2, we don’t yet have a treatment that is effective in women with BRCA1 that has been turned off, particularly those that develop a type of breast cancer called triple negative breast cancer. 
   
   Chris and Andrew are trying to understand why some people with this kind of breast cancer respond well to treatment, while others do not. They will then use this information to improve the effectiveness of treatments for people with BRCA1 gene that has turned off.
   
   Part of this work, with a particular focus on triple negative breast cancers that don’t respond to treatments given before surgery, is carried out at the Breast Cancer Now Research Unit at King’s College London.
   
   

3. Targeting HORMAD1 to treat more triple negative breast cancers 
   More than half of triple negative breast cancers have an overactive gene called HORMAD1. The team previously found that this is a weakness of breast cancer that could be exploited, just like BRCA1 or BRCA2 changes. 
   
   They’re now investigating breast cancer cells in the lab and mice to understand which drugs could be used to target these breast cancer cells by causing a lethal level of DNA damage.
   
   This could lead to new ways to treat triple negative breast cancer, which currently has fewer targeted treatments than other types. 
   
   
4. Finding better treatments for secondary lobular breast cancer
   Invasive lobular breast cancer accounts for approximately 15% of all breast cancers. And they tend to be oestrogen receptor positive. Sometimes, lobular breast cancers don’t respond as well to some treatments – so we need to find better ways to treat it. 
   
   Chris and Andrew are investigating if they can use drugs against newly-found weaknesses in lobular breast cancer. 
   
   This research is part of the Lobular Initiative at our research centre. It’s a collaborative project that aims to understand lobular breast cancer more and find better treatments for it. 
   

Andrew is an expert in taking findings from the lab into clinical trials, and Chris brings expertise in cutting-edge lab-based genetic research. With their long-term understanding of the biology of breast cancer, their research could lead to new and better ways to treat breast cancers that are currently harder to treat. This will allow more people to benefit from their groundbreaking research. 

This research could help thousands. Every year in the UK, there are 1,375 women that are diagnosed with breast cancer caused by changes in the BRCA gene, 8,000 people are diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer, and 8,250 with lobular breast cancer.