Grant: Operating Grant

According to the Canadian Cancer Statistics, an estimated 166,400 new cases of cancer and 73,800 deaths from cancer will occur in Canada in 2008. Everywhere in the world and Canada, breast cancer is the most common cancer among women. In fact, 22,400 Canadian women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008 and this is associated with a high rate of morbidity and mortality. Breast cancer has a high rate of developing osteolytic skeletal metastases, which once established, will result in bone pain, pathological fractures and death. This grant proposal is to elucidate the mechanisms of action of tumor-permissive growth factors, such as TGFß, that promote tumor metastasis. Our group recently found that TGFß increases the level of a protein, called cyclin D1. We will now investigate how this cyclin D1 protein affects cell migration, cell invasion and tumor metastasis at large in aggressive human breast cancer. Based on these finding, we will develop small antagonist compounds that will block breast cancer metastatic and osteolytic lesion development. This will open new avenues for the development of anti-breast cancer therapies and we expect the outcome to help contribute to a better survival rate and tumor remission for breast cancer patients.