09 Breast Cancer Research Program

BREAST CANCER RESEARCH PROGRAM (BCRP): PROJECT SUMMARY The long-term goals of the Breast Cancer Research Program (BCRP) are to define the fundamental mechanisms that regulate breast cancer pathology and then use this information to develop personalized strategies for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of all stages and subtypes of breast cancer. The BCRP leadership established collaborative working groups in clinical, basic, and population sciences to identify and develop novel implementation strategies for the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. These three groups are guided by the hypothesis that advances in basic and population sciences can be leveraged to enhance the clinical impact in successfully treating breast cancer. These translational efforts have been organized around three specific aims. Aim 1. Discover, identify, and validate novel personalized clinical targets for breast cancer. Aim 2. Utilize institutional expertise in basic sciences to define the molecular mechanisms that drive breast cancer progression and metastasis in individuals. Aim 3. Equalize breast cancer mortality by identifying personalized risk factors and developing targeted prevention and genomic strategies. The BCRP contains 19 members from four departments and two schools. Current funding exceeds $7.9 million, with $3.0 million from the NCI and $1.8 million from other peer-reviewed funding. BCRP members published 456 papers during 2014-2018, with 42% inter-programmatic publications and 24% intra-programmatic publications; that included contributions to Cell, Nature, Nature Communications, Nature Genetics, Cell Reports, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Journal of Clinical Oncology, and Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The broad-ranging achievements and future objectives of the BCRP cross the translational spectrum from basic science research to clinical and translational research.