Recent findings in breast cancer research

TheoryLab

In this episode—which skews more toward a scientific audience until the last five minutes—two American Cancer Society grantees spoke with each other about their recently published new findings in breast cancer research. Sonia de Assis, PhD, is interested in epigenetic inheritance: “In addition to genetic material or DNA, our parents also pass to us molecular memory of their environmental exposures, and that can affect our risk or predisposition to disease including cancer.” Matthew Sikora, PhD, focuses on invasive lobular carcinoma, a type of invasive breast cancer. He feels that “advances in treatment are hindered by our poor understanding of the distinct biology of invasive lobular carcinoma,” and his lab has identified a potential therapeutic target. Sonia de Assis, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Oncology at Georgetown University. She recently published findings showing that, “systemic alterations play a dominant role in epigenetic predisposition to breast cancer in offspring of obese fathers and is transmitted to a second generation:” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-86548-w. Matthew Sikora, PhD, of the Univ. of Colorado Denver, Anschutz Medical Campus and DC, is an Assistant Professor of Pathology. His latest work is titled, “Mediator of DNA damage checkpoint 1 (MDC1) is a novel estrogen receptor co-regulator in invasive lobular carcinoma of the breast:” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33947745/. 1:49 – Dr. de Assis on epigenetic inheritance and her recently published findings 5:30 – Reactions from Dr. Sikora and what stood out to him about Dr. de Assis’s findings: “Figure 2A really smacked me in the face and just got me going…” 9:23 – “Do you think it’s actually the tRNA levels that are different that are causing the phenotype, or are those indicative of a different epigenetic context in the sperm?” 11:31 – “One thing I want to make clear is that we think the non-coding RNAs act with a hit-and-run effect…” 12:35 – Dr. Sikora on invasive lobular carcinoma and his new publication 16:08 – Invasive lobular carcinoma versus invasive ductal carcinoma 19:12 – “That’s a fabulous question, and my R01 reviewers had the exact same question a few cycles ago…” 22:27 – “How do you see using MDC1 as a therapeutic target because of this dichotomy that’s a tumor suppressor but also an oncogene?” 24:30 – They note some interesting connections between their work 27:13 – Dr. de Assis explains why it’s important to understand epigenetic memory 28:50 – Dr. Sikora describes why he became interested in invasive lobular carcinoma