Grant: Operating Grant - PA: Regional Partnership Program : Manitoba

The ability to support multiple pregnancies suggests that breast tissue possess an enormous regenerative capacity, which is due to the special functions of a small population of cells in the breast tissue called stem cells. Unfortunately, alterations to some of the functions of these normal stem cells can cause them to produce malignant breast tumors. Because of their regenerative potential, these malignant stem cells are thought to cause tumor recurrence and are spared by the current therapies. Therefore, to develop more effective and possibly curative therapies against breast cancer, we must first understand how these stem cells function in the normal breast in order to understand how their altered function can produce tumors. This knowledge can then be used to develop therapies aimed at eliminating these stem cells and therefore, decrease risk of tumor recurrence. The projects proposed here build on our previous, work which identified a key regulator of the specialized cells in the breast tissue (stem cells) that are responsible for its regenerative capacity. We now propose to examine the mechanisms in which this gene controls the regenerative ability of these stem cells. For this purpose, we will use our unique ability to isolate these specialized cells from discarded tissue collected from breast reduction surgeries. We then manipulate the expression of our gene in these specialized cells and study the regenerative properties of these 'manipulated stem cells' and identify other key regulatory genes that may be involved in this process. This project proposes to characterize the mechanism by which a key regulator of the normal and malignant stem cell functions and this insight will be used to develop new ways to treat breast cancer in a more effective and permanent fashion.