Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
New York, New York
Chief of Breast Surgery, Mount Sinai Health System Director of Dubin Cancer Center, Mount Sinai Hospital Associate Attending, Tisch Cancer Institute
Developing new treatments for triple-negative breast cancer.
Despite advances in treatments for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), an aggressive form of breast cancer that is more likely to spread than other subtypes, it remains a deadly disease for many patients. While chemotherapy and immunotherapy are effective for some, not all respond or sustain their response to those treatments. Drs. Port and Irie are investigating targets for new therapeutics for patients with TNBC.
The team has identified an important driver of TNBC tumor growth and metastasis called protein tyrosine kinase 6 (PTK6). They have developed novel compounds that reduce levels of PTK6 by degrading it – an advantage over classical drugs that only inhibit protein activity.
The team will test the efficacy of PTK6 degraders in pre-clinical models that closely mimic patient tumors, including those resistant to chemotherapy. They will monitor their toxicity and pharmacological properties and use them as tools to determine how PTK6 regulates growth and survival of TNBC cells. Understanding these mechanisms will help identify biomarkers that predict whether a patient will respond to PTK6 degraders once they are clinically developed.
Elisa Port, MD, FACS is the Chief of Breast Surgery and the Director of the Dubin Breast Center at Mount Sinai Hospital. She is also the Associate Attending Physician in the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount-Sinai School of Medicine. After receiving her medical degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1992, Dr. Port was a general surgery resident at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. She then joined Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for a breast cancer surgery research fellowship, and later completed a general surgery residency at Long Island Jewish Medical Center. She is currently working on developing research protocols for investigating the use of avatar models in triple negative breast cancer. Her clinical research work involves investigating and characterizing the role of MRI, 3D mammography, and patient decision making in breast cancer screening and surgery. Dr. Port has an active practice and performs hundreds of operations each year. She is an expert in sentinel-node biopsy, nipple sparing mastectomy, as well as the use of breast MRI in high-risk patients. She is also a member of several professional associations, including the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society of Breast Diseases, the Society of Surgical Oncology, and is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.
“If not for BCRF, we would not have been able to take on the challenges associated with developing novel therapeutics for triple-negative breast cancer, from identification of new gene targets to drug design and validation.”
2014
The Women's Cancer Research Fund Award
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai New York, New York
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