Elsa Flores, PhD

Cancer happens when certain genes change and cells grow out of control. New efforts look closely at each patient’s tumor so researchers and doctors can pick treatments that shrink that tumor. This is important for finding ways to treat pathways that are hard to target with drugs. One of the hardest to fix is TP53 (also called p53), the gene most often changed in cancer. Because p53 helps normal cells work, trying to target it directly can cause harmful side effects. To get around that, our research studies two related genes, TP63 and TP73, which can do some of the same jobs as p53 to stop tumors from growing. Our earlier V Foundation funding in 2005 helped us discover new roles for TP63 and TP73, and now we plan to use the pathways they control to make up for lost p53 function. This idea may work better than trying to fix p53 directly, since those methods are often only partly effective or only work for certain mutations. We also found special non-coding RNAs that affect how tumors grow and respond to treatment. The new therapies we propose aim to target tumors precisely and cause less harm to patients. Although we focus on lung, breast, and ovarian cancers, these approaches could help any cancer with TP53 mutations.