Dr Christopher Staples and his PhD student want to better understand how breast cancers with an altered BRCA1 gene can stimulate the immune system. Because knowing this could pave the way for new treatments.
What's the challenge?
More people are surviving breast cancer than ever before thanks to research. But we’re still not where we need to be. Too many treatments come with gruelling side-effects. And the fear of cancer coming back lingers.
Even when we know some breast cancers have weaknesses in their genes, we need to find better ways to treat them. Like breast cancers caused by an altered BRCA1 gene. We’ve helped develop life-saving treatments such as PARP inhibitors, which specifically target these cancer cells, but they can still become resistant to them.
So, we’re not stopping here. We’re researching now to find more treatments.
Inheriting an altered BRCA1 gene significantly increases your chances of getting breast and some other cancers too. While targeted treatments like olaparib have been a gamechanger, cancers still find ways around them. So we’re studying how breast cancers with BRCA1 gene changes affect the immune system to find new weaknesses we can target.
The science behind the project
Our cells are constantly repairing damage to their DNA and BRCA genes play an important part in this repair process. But when one of these genes is altered, DNA damage doesn't get fixed properly. So mistakes multiply. And over time, this increases the risk of developing breast cancer and other cancers.
Over the last decade, it's become clear that DNA damage in cells and problems with repairing it can also drive inflammation. So, Dr Christopher Staples and his PhD student at Bangor University want to better understand how breast cancers with changes in the BRCA1 gene interact with the immune system.
Christopher’s team recently found that a protein that allows cells to detect damaged DNA plays a key role in this process and helps ovarian cancers with an altered BRCA1 gene survive. Now, they’re working to understand if it plays a similar role in breast cancer.
The team are using advanced technologies, including studying breast cancer in mice. They want to know how this protein affects breast cancers with an altered BRCA1 gene. So they're studying how the immune system reacts to these cancers, which might also help explain why some of these cancers don't respond as well to immunotherapy.
But they’re not working alone. The team is also collaborating with other researchers to study the structure of this protein in action, with the long-term goal of targeting it with new drugs to treat breast cancers with an altered BRCA1 gene.
What difference will this project make?
We need more and better breast cancer treatments. Treatments that take less of a toll. Treatments that stop the disease in its tracks. So that people can stop worrying about the life-altering side effects or the disease coming back.
This project should improve our understanding of how breast cancers caused by an altered BRCA1 gene survive – and help us find new weaknesses to exploit. Opening the doors to new ways to treat these types of cancer.
How many people could this project help?
Thousands. Around 1 in 400 people inherit an altered BRCA1 gene. That’s thousands of people across the UK who are much more likely to get breast cancer. And if they do, we want to make sure they can get the best treatments.
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