Albert Einstein College of Medicine Bronx, New York
Professor of Pathology
Understanding what drives tumor growth and survival in order to prevent the spread of breast cancer.
Metastasis—the spread of tumors to other tissues—is the main cause of death from breast cancer. While treatable, metastatic breast cancer is currently incurable. Metastasis is a complex, multi-step process. For tumors to metastasize, cancer cells must travel through the bloodstream or lymphatic system. The mechanisms that give cancer cells the ability to travel through the body and colonize new sites, however, are still emerging. Dr. Hazan seeks to uncover how cancer cells acquire the ability to spread to develop new therapeutic strategies to prevent metastasis from occurring.
Dr. Hazan and her team identified a subset of cells in both the primary tumor and the metastasis that drive aggressive behavior through activation of specific genes. This is important because they are now able to pinpoint subpopulations of cancer cells within the primary tumor that are active in the process of metastasis. Their findings point to one subpopulation in particular, found both in the primary tumor and the metastatic site, that fuels metastatic virulence. Importantly, this subpopulation is inherently aggressive and regulates p63, another critical mediator of metastasis.
In the upcoming year, Dr. Hazan will investigate the regulation of p63. She and her team aim to elucidate the players in the signaling pathway that affect p63, and factors that may orchestrate metastasis. Gaining a deeper understanding of this process is critical to clarifying the complexity of metastatic progression and ultimately finding druggable targets to treat patients with metastatic breast cancer.
Dr. Rachel Hazan received her PhD from George Washington University in 1990. She performed her thesis work under Dr. Joseph Schlessinger, where she studied Her2 signaling in breast cancer, and was the first to map Her2 phosphorylation sites. She then joined Dr. Gerald Edelman, a Nobel laureate at Rockefeller University and Scripps Research Institute to study adhesion molecules and their regulation in neuronal and epithelial cells. This served as a basis for her ongoing work on cadherin adhesion molecules and their role in breast cancer dissemination. In 1994, she joined Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where she initiated seminal studies on the role of cadherin switching in breast cancer progression. In 1997, she became Assistant Professor at the Mount-Sinai School of Medicine, and is presently Professor of Pathology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Hazan has been studying the role of adhesion in invasion and epithelial to mesenchymal transition leading to metastasis. She showed that N-cadherin activates cancer spread by sustaining activation and signaling of the Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptor. Dr. Hazan discovered a variety of signaling pathways that contribute to metastasis and has so far elucidated key signaling modules including the MAPK, AKT and cell cycle regulators as critical promoters of metastasis. Her work uses laboratory models, cell culture systems and validation in clinical breast specimens. These models serve as a platform to elucidate mechanisms of metastatic spread with the goal of identifying pivotal targets for therapeutic application.
2007
The Neil and Jane Golub Award
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center New York, New York
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