Titles and Affiliations
John Charles Cain Distinguished Chair
Department of Clinical Cancer Prevention
Research area
Developing effective, targeted therapies for the prevention of triple-negative breast cancer
Impact
During the past ten years, incidence of breast cancer in the United States has steadily increased. Preventative drugs that target essential pathways involved in breast cancer development have been extensively studied. For example, endocrine therapies that target estrogen receptor (ER), can prevent the formation of ER-positive breast cancer. However, these therapies do not prevent the formation of ER-negative breast cancer. Because ER-negative breast cancers, including the aggressive triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) subtype, are associated with poorer outcomes, there is a critical need to develop effective therapies that can prevent ER-negative and triple-negative breast cancer. Dr. Brown and his team are seeking to develop effective, targeted therapies that can prevent these subtypes of breast cancer, particularly in patients with BRCA1 gene mutations who are at greater risk of developing cancer.
Progress Thus Far
The team has found that the specific activator of retinoid X receptor (RXR), IRX4204, delays the formation of tumors in laboratory models of ER-negative and triple-negative breast cancer. Early results show that this drug can bring more cancer-killing immune cells into tumors, but combining it with another type of immunotherapy did not work better than each treatment alone, suggesting that the timing and sequence of these therapies may be critical.
What’s next
The team will work to understand why some BRCA1-related breast cancers still form even after preventive treatment. By modeling breast cancer in the laboratory, they will look at how the surrounding tissue and immune cells respond to different targeted drugs, and test whether combining two drugs—one that boosts tumor immune response and one that blocks DNA repair—can work together to better prevent tumor growth.
Biography
Powel Brown, MD, PhD is a molecular biologist and breast medical oncologist at the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center, where he is Chair of the Department of Clinical Cancer Prevention. His research interests lie in developing therapies for the prevention of breast cancer and focuses on developing molecularly targeted therapies for the treatment and prevention of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). He has been the Principal Investigator of MD Anderson’s National Institute of Health (NIH)/National Cancer Institute (NCI)-funded PREVENT program which supports preclinical research testing and prevention interventions. He has also directed an NCI-funded Cancer Prevention Consortium to conduct clinical cancer prevention trials. Dr. Brown’s leadership roles include serving as Leader of the Cancer Prevention Program at the MD Anderson Cancer Center and President of the International Society of Cancer Prevention, and he is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
If not for BCRF we would be unable to conduct our research to identify novel immune strategies for the prevention of breast cancer in high-risk women.
