Funded by the Foligno Face-Off in honor of Janis Foligno in partnership with Hockey Fights Cancer powered by the V Foundation
The Game-Changer Challenge: Identify what drives hormone therapy resistance in breast cancer and stop it. We have discovered a way by which fats found in some processed foods and cooking oils promote breast cancer. This occurs in 40% of breast cancer and happens when oils undergo conversion to harmful fats that promote breast cancer. These patients have a mutation in a gene called PIK3CA. When this problem occurs, breast cancer doesn’t respond to hormonal treatment. We have found a way to solve this problem in breast cancer by using a new drug developed from the diabetes drug metformin to block production of these harmful fats. In collaboration with Dr. Matthew Goetz (Mayo Clinic) and our group (Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota) we have found a way to use this new drug to improve treatment. We can now restore sensitivity of breast cancer to treatment by adding our new drug to standard therapy in a mouse model. In the proposed studies we plan to develop a combination of our new drug and standard of care drugs to get better results for patients. We have also discovered how the harmful fats promote breast cancer. Using our animal model we also seek to identify ways to further block this harmful fat pathway causing breast cancer progression. Our long-term goal is to test this new drug in a clinical trial in advanced breast cancer. Our goal is to benefit patients whose breast cancer failed to respond to treatment because of these harmful fats.
