Advancing the Search for a Cure

ALBANY – Breast cancer is the second most common cancer, after skin cancer, among women in the United States, accounting for one in three of all new female cancers each year.

At Albany Medical College, scientists are contributing to research that advances the understanding of this disease, potentially laying the groundwork for effective new treatments and therapeutics.

Among them is Molecular and Cellular Physiology Professor Margarida Barroso, PhD, who is in the midst of an NIH-funded study, in collaboration with colleagues at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, investigating the use of artificial intelligence to improve targeted drug therapy in HER2-positive breast cancer treatment.

“We hope the advanced imaging approach we’re developing will allow biologists and clinicians to see exactly how a drug binds to a tumor and thereby provide a better understanding of how tumors adapt or change during treatment,” said Dr. Barroso.

In a recent study published in the journal Oncogene, Dr. Barroso and her team also offered new insights into iron’s role in the metastatic growth of breast cancer, showing that how it acts may depend on its location—that is, whether it’s in a cancerous tumor in the breast or in cancer cells that have metastasized and spread from the breast.

The results indicate the existence of distinct iron transport pathways among different breast cancer cell lines

and suggest a possible therapeutic target for future experiments.

In his lab, Associate Professor John Lamar, PhD, also studies breast cancer metastasis, with a focus on identifying molecular pathways that promote metastasis. He and his team also test whether those pathways could be targeted to help treat metastatic disease.

“Cancer metastasis is responsible for greater than 90 percent of all cancer mortality,” noted Dr. Lamar, adding that patients diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer have a five-year survival of only 22 percent.

“Understanding how metastasis is regulated is a necessary first step in the development of more effective therapies to prevent and treat stage four breast cancer,” he said.

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