Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Cancer has existed for millions of years, but even after billions of dollars in research, we haven’t found a solution that affects more than 14 million lives annually. Women account for 99% of breast cancer patients, while men account for only 1%. The lack of treatment options can be accredited to the lack of knowledge of the relationship between breast cancer and the growth of cancerous cells. Many treatment options are available, like endocrine therapy, which has been proven beneficial. However, it has been observed that about 30% of hormone receptor-positive breast cancer patients develop de novo resistance to endocrine therapy, which becomes invasive. N-myristoyltransferase (NMT) is an enzyme responsible for making substrate proteins sticky, including oncoproteins. We recently demonstrated that NMT is a biomarker in primary breast cancer tissue which could predict endocrine therapy response and recurrence. My research project will focus on validating the NMT-based test for the prediction and prognosis of breast cancer and investigate the underlying mechanism of the NMT-mediated oncogene regulation in different breast cancer types, including triple-negative breast cancer.