ANNOUNCEMENT

NOBEL PRIZE 2026

This year's laureates, their fields, and the discoveries that earned them the prize.Live nowSee the winners
Moonbase
← Back to Awards
NIHNATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE

Emerging Strategies for Therapy of Metastatic Brain Cancer

Active
Institution
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY AT CHICAGO, IL
Principal investigator
Maciej S Lesniak
Funding
$948K
Duration
2024–2031
Open portfolio

Moonbase score

Still being scored

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY Brain cancer remains a devastating disease and in particular, brain metastases (BM) from breast cancer represent the leading cause of fatality for women. The major hindrance to significant clinical benefit for BM is the poor permeability of monoclonal antibodies (i.e. trastuzumab) across the blood brain barrier (BBB), resulting in surgical resection and radiation therapies as the first line therapeutic options. With our team of experienced and highly accomplished scientists with strong track record in basic, translational, and clinical research, we propose to advance the science of metastases to the brain by focusing on 1) understanding of fundamental biology of HER2+ breast cancer metastases to the brain via patient tissue-based genetic dissection of risk factors 2) the advancement in real-time of visualization of cancer cells and neural stem cells (NSCs) targeting HER2+ BM and 3) the application of targeted NSC delivery of trastuzumab analogs to suppress the growth of HER2+ BM. The novel paradigm established by this application will advance our understanding of how cancer cells invade and spread thru the brain and potentially help herald an era of genetically engineered stem cells as targeted delivery conduit for anti-HER2 therapy against HER2+ BM.

LOADING MOONBASE SCORE

NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTER35ZCA1-SRB-E(M1)Rbrainbreastcancerbreast cancerbrain cancercancer cellsnscsmetastases

Questions for NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY AT CHICAGO

Answered by the team behind this research.

No questions yet. Sign in to ask the first one

Related grants

Same researchers, same institution, same topic, scored first.