Martine J. Piccart, MD, PhD

Understanding the molecular alterations in metastatic breast cancer that correlate with disease progression and/or therapeutic resistance.

Impact

Metastatic breast cancer (MBC) is the leading causes of cancer-related mortality among women in the Western world. Dr. Piccart and her team of cancer experts and bio-informaticians are analyzing tumor tissue and blood samples collected from patients enrolled in the AURORA study, a flagship study of BCRF’s Evelyn H. Lauder Founder’s Fund for Metastatic Breast Cancer Research. She and her team hope to identify changes in tumor DNA that affect how the tumor responds to treatment to enable the discovery of new treatments, while improving the effectiveness of current therapies to extend the lives of women and men living with MBC.

Progress thus far

Dr. Piccart’s team is conducting deep molecular analysis of samples taken from the primary tumor and matched metastatic lesions of patients included in the AURORA molecular screening program. The AURORA trial has accrued more than 1,100 women and men from 62 hospitals across 11 EU countries. Molecular profiling analyses from 628 participants revealed higher prevalence of a genetic aberration that has been linked to resistance to hormone therapy. The team found that the mutation can be present in the primary breast tumor metastatic disease is detected, indicating that tumors may have an intrinsic capacity for resistance to hormone therapy. The early detection of this mutation in future patients could help tailor treatments to avoid metastasis. The study has now been expanded to include patients with invasive lobular or triple-negative MBC, as well as those who were diagnosed with MBC many years after ostensibly curative therapy.

What’s next

The team is completing integrated analyses of 1,156 patients with the analyses from several AURORA working groups. Their aim is to publish manuscripts from these analyses and share the full dataset with the wider scientific community, including through the BCRF Global Data Hub, to enable more innovative translational research. Sites in five countries are being activated to enroll more patients with ILC, TNBC, and late relapses. Analyzing data from all AURORA patients will be essential to validate initial findings and to allow for the study of rarer subtypes of breast cancer. This will enable a better understanding of the origin and evolution of metastatic breast cancer.