Grant: Operating Grant - PA: Alberta Cancer Foundation - Research (bridge funding)

Breast cancer is the leading cause of death among cancer patients. Great strides have been made in understanding the factors causing breast cancer and new drugs are being continuously explored for therapy. However, the traditional chemotherapy is still the treatment of choice for breast cancers, but it is rarely curative and it loses its effectiveness on the long-term. The main reason for this is that the cancer cells adopt and become resistant to chemotherapy. More and more drugs need to be injected to curb cancer growth, and after a point the side effects of such toxic drugs becomes unacceptable. This project is intended to develop a new approach for chemotherapy of cancers by developing a better understanding of the reasons for resistance to therapy. We intend to design specific ways to overcome such resistance mechanisms, so that the chemotherapy becomes effective again as well as long lasting. We plan to achieve this by silencing (or eradicating) the molecules responsible for resistance so that the administered anti-cancer drugs become effective again on the cancer cells. Effective delivery systems will be paramount in this project designed in this project to accomplish the desired silencing. The delivery systems are intended to deliver the silencer molecules into cancer cells without harming the healthy cells. Animal models will be utilized to determine the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Since none of the clinical chemotherapy approaches employ 'sensitization' regimen, our approach will introduce a new cancer treatment modality. By making the chemotherapy more effective and tolerable, we plan to make a direct impact in improving the survival of breast cancer patients.