The overall aim of the group鈥檚 work is to uncover and map new mechanisms of early breast cancer evolution, hoping to improve current diagnostic tools for breast cancer patients and to reduce the treatment burden. PI is Carina Strell, closely connected to CCBIO, University of Bergen.聽The research focuses on聽the biology of breast ductal carcinoma in聽situ (DCIS), with the ambition to聽comprehensively elucidate the underlying聽regulatory signaling mechanisms of聽early breast cancer evolution towards聽clinical disease progression and therapy聽response. Special emphasis is placed on聽understanding the interplay between聽genetic alterations and the tumor聽microenvironment by using state-of-theart聽spatial mapping techniques for tissue聽analysis. Strell鈥檚 team further reaches聽beyond biological aspects and aims to聽uncover novel therapeutic opportunities聽as well as clinically relevant treatment聽stratification models for women with early聽breast cancer.
Only few DCIS lesions have the聽potential to progress to invasive breast聽cancer. However, since the regulatory聽mechanisms of cancer evolution are still聽largely undefined, a biological or clinical聽prediction of disease progression and聽therapy response remains difficult. The聽consequence is a high risk of over- as well聽as undertreatment for women with early聽breast cancer. Thus, improving guidance聽for clinicians and optimizing therapy聽applications is a major task for precision聽medicine.
The research team will prioritize the聽adaptation of their established spatial聽tissue profiling techniques (in situ聽sequencing, PLA) to the Hyperion聽system. This will complement the聽ongoing spatial proteomics efforts at聽CCBIO with approaches for spatial聽genomics and signaling pathway聽mapping. The group will also seek聽contacts with CCBIO bioinformaticians聽and big data specialists to facilitate聽the integration of multiple layers with聽different spatial omics data into current聽bioinformatical analysis pipelines for聽deep tissue profiling.
