Grant: Operating Grant

Worldwide there are 1 million new cases of breast cancer and the greatest challenge is tumours that are resistant to conventional therapies. This is not all that uncommon given that 30% of women will experience breast cancer recurrence following their initial treatment. Further complicating matters, once the cancer returns womens are 100 times more likely to die from the disease. We discovered a protein referred to as YB-1 and its activated form P-YB-1S102 are expressed in ~50% of all breast cancers based on measuring it in ~5500 cases. It holds promise as a therapeutic target for this disease because it mediates resistance and further breast cancer cells continue to depend on it even when they have developed drug insensitivity. In this proposal we will explore the possibility that we can inhibit YB-1 using drugs that block its activation. In order to translate this quickly we will screen drugs that are currently in clinical trials in the hope that there may be agents "in the pipline" that could be used to tailor treatment.