Co-Leaders
Ronald Buckanovich
Program: Cancer Biology
Summary
Ovarian cancer is a disease that has high rates of resistance to both chemotherapy and immunotherapy. This therapeutic resistance drives a poor prognosis for patients with ovarian cancer. A primary focus of my group is to understand therapeutic resistance and develop therapeutic approaches to overcome this resistance. We are working to understand both cancer cell inherent mechanisms of therapeutic resistance and how interactions with host cells in the tumor microenvironment increase therapeutic resistance.
We are currently focusing on understanding the biology of a population of slowly dividing/non-dividing or ‘quiescent’ cancer cells. These quiescent cells are inherently resistant to chemotherapy and radiation therapy – both of which kill fast growing cells. Upon exposure to chemotherapy, we find that these cells quiescent cells secrete novel factors to make neighboring cells resistant to both chemotherapy and immunotherapies. Following completion of chemotherapy treatment these quiescent cells can resume proliferation and drive disease recurrence.
Furthermore, following chemotherapy exposure, these cells secrete additional factors which create an immunosuppressive microenvironment. Given the critical role of these cells in therapeutic resistance, we are developing novel therapeutic approaches to kill these otherwise resistant cells. Based on our findings we are currently running two different clinical trials to determine if we can prevent chemotherapy or immunotherapy resistance.
Research Interests and Keywords
- cancer stem cells,ovarian cancer,targeted therapies,tumor vasculature
Steffi Oesterreich
Program: Cancer Biology
5051 Centre Ave
Pittsburgh PA
Summary
The main interest of Dr. Oesterreich's laboratory is to further our understanding of hormone action in women's cancers (including both breast and ovarian cancers), with the ultimate goal to use this knowledge for improved diagnosis and endocrine treatment. These studies include many aspects of translational breast cancer research utilizing basic biochemistry, molecular and cell biology, and cell lines, mouse models and clinical samples. Over the last few years, Dr. Oesterreich has developed a strong research interest in in situ and invasive lobular disease, the second most common yet understudied histological subtype of breast cancer. In her role as Director of Education at the Women's Cancer Research Center, Dr. Oesterreich is also very interested in providing outstanding training opportunities to the next generation of women's cancer researchers.
Research Interests and Keywords
- bone metastases,Breast Cancer,Chromatin,coregulators,Epigenetics,estrogen receptor,invasive lobular carcinoma,lobular carcinoma in situ,mutations,ovarian cancer