Grant: Project Grant

This application brings together an interdisciplinary team of experts who share the goal of generating new understanding of the nature and causes of changes within different types of human breast cells that promote the increased appearance of breast cancer in older women (after menopause). The strategy proposed is to generate first a comprehensive definition of the biological and molecular properties of cells that make up healthy breast tissue in young and older normal women. These data will then be compared to identify age-related changes. The second step will be to subject the same cells to a pre-established genetic alteration that causes them to produce breast cancers in transplanted mice that lack an immune system and analyze these to determine if the susceptibility to tumour creation increases with age and/or if the experimental tumours contain footprints of the age-specific features of the cells from which they were derived. These comparisons will reveal previously unknown changes that occur as the breast ages, how these may relate to an increased tendency for these cells to become transformed, and identify potential new indicators of incipient disease or intervention treatments.