Indiana University School of Medicine Indianapolis, Indiana
Lois and Sid Eskenazi Chair in Hematology/Oncology Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology Full member, Experimental and Developmental Therapeutic
Identifying alternatives to prophylactic surgery for breast cancer prevention.
Prophylactic mastectomy is an effective risk-reduction strategy for high-risk individuals, but it also places a significant burden on patients. Alternative preventive strategies are greatly needed to help patients avoid the pain and financial costs of surgery and one approach is chemoprevention—the use of drugs to prevent cancer initiation or growth. Dr. Liby’s work focuses on developing new prevention drugs and drug-delivery systems for individuals with a high-risk of breast cancer.
Dr. Liby and her team optimized an innovative strategy in the laboratory to identify safe, well-tolerated new drugs to prevent or treat breast cancer. In the past year, the team has made significant progress advancing one of their lead compounds, named MSU42011, confirming that it is highly specific for its target, which will reduce its side effects. They have shown that the combination of MSU42011 and immunotherapy is more effective than either drug alone. Targeting the immune system for the prevention or treatment of breast cancer remains a promising approach, and MSU42011 and other novel compounds identified in the screens favorably alter the immune system while suppressing tumor growth. The team’s research has found that MSU42011 and a related compound might also block cancer cell characteristics known to be associated with metastasis, such as migration and invasion.
In the upcoming year, Dr. Liby’s top priority is completing the next steps in the drug development process required to test MSU42011 in patients. New studies will evaluate the effectiveness of the combination of MSU42011 plus an immune checkpoint inhibitor for the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer in a laboratory model. The team will also continue to identify new candidate molecules for the prevention of metastasis.
Karen Liby, PhD is the Lois and Sid Eskenazi Chair in Hematology/Oncology and a professor of medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, Indiana. Dr. Liby earned her PhD from the University of Cincinnati and then worked with Michael B. Sporn—a pioneer in the field of chemoprevention—at Dartmouth Medical School for 12 years. She was awarded the Wilson S. Stone Memorial Award by the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2007.
Her research priorities are to develop and test new drugs and drug combinations for the prevention and treatment of cancer and to explore novel drug delivery systems. She has tested several novel drugs and found that they can both prevent and treat experimental breast cancer and is working to move these drugs into the clinic. She is also studying the molecular mechanism of action of these drugs and identifying and validating biomarkers that will be needed to evaluate these drugs clinically.
2008
Please remember BCRF in your will planning. Learn More
