Titles and Affiliations
Leonard Schnitzer Chair in Breast Cancer
Professor of Cell, Developmental and Cancer Biology
Knight Cancer Institute
Research area
Developing targeted therapies for postpartum breast cancer
Impact
Young onset breast cancer (YOBC) is less responsive to therapeutic intervention, carries high mortality, and is on the rise worldwide. Dr. Schedin’s studies reveal that the date of last childbirth, especially a diagnosis within 5 years of childbirth, is a better predictive measure of metastasis in young women than tumor estrogen receptor (ER) status or germline BRCA1/2 mutational status. Since 30-50 percent of all YOBC cases are considered postpartum breast cancer (PPBC), these pioneering studies have transformed our understanding of high-risk breast cancer in young women. Further, her work has identified previously unknown targets for both reducing the incidence of PPBC and improving response to therapies in this vulnerable population.
Progress Thus Far
Dr. Schedin’s research group has found that in healthy women, weaning-induced involution of the breast, or return of the breast to the pre-pregnant state, occurs through a wound-like process. This process is similar to that which occurs in highly metastatic tumors. Identifying pro-metastatic stromal changes in the normal involuting breast, or changes observed in the breast connective tissue, has challenged the “protective effect of pregnancy” paradigm and led to the first experimentally verifiable hypothesis to explain the observation that women diagnosed with breast cancer after recent childbirth have poor prognosis. Dr. Schedin’s work has also led to the recognition that pregnancy-associated breast cancer is an outdated subtype of breast cancer, with treatment advances requiring a separation of cases diagnosed during pregnancy from postpartum cases.
What’s next
The recognition that weaning is a hot spot of stromal-epithelial interactions that confer increased risk of breast cancer progression means that strategies targeting the stroma are likely to be highly efficacious against PPBC. Current studies are focused on understanding the unique therapeutic vulnerabilities of PPBC and the development of effective treatment strategies against these vulnerabilities.
Biography
Dr. Schedin is Professor of Cell, Developmental and Cancer Biology, and the Leonard Schnitzer Chair in Breast Cancer, at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). Dr. Schedin is the former co-director for the Cancer Prevention and Control Program, having served during the transition that led to Comprehensive Cancer Center status for the Knight Cancer Institute. Dr. Schedin is founder and co-director of the Early Career Advancement Program for OHSU Research Faculty and founding member of the OHSU CIMER Mentoring Academy for Graduate Faculty, exemplifying her commitment to mentorship. Prior to joining OHSU in 2014, Dr. Schedin was Professor in the Division of Medical Oncology at the University of Colorado Anschutz, where she co-founded and co-directed the Young Women’s Breast Cancer Translational Program with Dr. Virginia Borges. This is a first-of-its-kind program combining a clinic specifically for young onset patients with direct clinic to bench translational research. Originally trained as a molecular developmental biologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, followed by training in dietary breast cancer prevention at the AMC Cancer Research Institute in Denver, Colorado, Dr. Schedin’s successes are the result of transdisciplinary, collaborative research with epidemiologists, oncologists, endocrinologists, chemists, immunologists, and TME researchers.
