SPOREs
Breast
Projects
The Influence of tumor-stromal cell interactions
Aim 1: To determine if stromal cells from uninvolved breast tissue from patients with breast cancer are more conducive to cancer development than stromal cells of women without cancer.
Aim 2: To identify gene expression signatures of stromal cells associated with cancer, stromal cells from uninvolved breast tissue from patients with breast cancer, and stromal cells from breasts without cancer.
Aim 3: To determine in human breast tissue samples if there is an association between stromal markers and epithelial lesions associated with increased breast cancer risk, and to determine if there are stomal markers that can be used as independent risk indicators.
Key Personnel
Kornelia Polyak, MD, PhD - DFCI
Stuart Schnitt, MD - BIDMC
Robert Weinberg, PhD - WI
Recent Publications
Kleer C, Bloushtain-Qimron N, Chen Y-H, Carrasco D, Hu M, Kraeft SK, Collins LC, Sabel MS, Gelman R, Krop IE, Schnitt S, Polyak K. Epithelial and stromal Cathepsin K and CXCL14 expression in breast tumor progression. Clin Can Res, in press
Boehm JB*, Zhao J*, Yao J*, Kim SY, Dunn IF, Sjostrom SK, Garraway LA, Weremowicz S, Greulich H, Stewart CJ, Mulvey LA, Ambrogio L, Hill DE, Vidal M, Meyerson M, Grenier J, Hinkle G, Root DE, Roberts TM, Lander ES, Polyak K*, Hahn WC*. Integrative genomic approaches identify IKBKE as a breast cancer oncogene. *indicates equal first and senior authors, respectively. Cell 2007; 129:1065-1079.
Hu M, Yao, J, Carroll DK, Weremowicz S, Chen H, Carrassco DE, Richardson AL, Violette S, Nikolskaya T, Nikolsky Y, Bauerlein EL, William C. Hahn WC, Gelman RS, Allred C, Bissell MJ, Schnitt SJ, Polyak K. Regulation of in situ to invasive breast carcinoma transition. Cancer Cell 2008; 13:394-406.
Hu M and Polyak K. Microenvironmental regulation of cancer development.
Curr. Op. Genet. Dev. 2007; 18:1 8
Campbell LL and Polyak K. Breast Tumor Heterogeneity: Cancer stem cells or clonal evolution? Cell Cycle 2007; 6:2332-2338.
Polyak K. Breast cancer stem cells: a case of mistaken identity? Stem Cell Rev 2007; 3:107-109.
Polyak K. Breast cancer: origins and evolution, J Clin Inv 2007; 117:3155-3163.
