Ozgur Sahin
Medical University of South Carolina, SC·Pharmacology
Chemotherapy still fails in many aggressive breast cancers, and part of the reason lies outside the tumor cells themselves, in the dense mesh of proteins that surrounds them. Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) makes up roughly 15% of breast cancer cases but causes about 30% of breast cancer deaths, and chemotherapy is its main treatment.
- Fields
Pharmacology
Biochemistry
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
triple negative breast cancer
chemoresistance
lysyl oxidase
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2026
What they work on
- Test whether the collagen cross-linking function of lysyl oxidase (LOX) causes broad chemotherapy resistance in triple negative breast cancer, using CRISPR LOX knockout and reconstitution plus MALDI mass spectrometry imaging of drug penetration.
- Determine how LOX-driven matrix stiffening changes integrin-mediated signaling and tumor drug access, imaging collagen architecture with multiphoton second harmonic generation microscopy in cell and animal models.
- Identify a non-canonical, transcription-regulating role for LOX by combining RNA sequencing with TurboID proximity labeling to find LOX substrates, and test oxidation-deficient substrate mutants for effects on chemoresistance.
- Characterize new selective small-molecule LOX inhibitors for potency, off-target profile, pharmacokinetics and toxicity, and test whether they resensitize TNBC organoids and patient-derived xenografts to chemotherapy.
More about the research
This project asks how one enzyme that stiffens that surrounding mesh makes tumors resistant to chemotherapy, and whether blocking it can make the drugs work again.
Why it matters
Women with triple negative breast cancer have few options once chemotherapy stops working, and survival is poor. By showing preclinically whether inhibiting lysyl oxidase restores sensitivity to standard chemotherapy, this work could support a drug strategy that makes existing, widely available treatments effective again, in TNBC and potentially in other treatment-resistant tumors that depend on LOX.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Yaguang Xi
University of Georgia, GA·Pharmacology
Determine how the oncogenic microRNA miR-10b and its target gene NR4A3 contribute to the experimental compound LG007's activity against triple-negative breast cancer.
Jun He
Thomas Jefferson University, PA·Biochemistry
Determine how suppression of the microRNA miR-152 confers resistance to doxorubicin chemotherapy and radiation in triple-negative breast cancer cells, and test whether EZH2 and DNA hypermethylation are responsible for silencing miR-152.
Dan Shu
Ohio State University, OH·Biomedical Engineering
Build and evaluate exosome–RNA nanoparticle complexes carrying TNBC-targeting ligands, including RNA aptamers against EGFR, CD133, CD44 or nAHRs and the chemical ligand methotrexate, together with tumor-suppressing siRNA and miRNA cargo.
The school
Medical University of South Carolina: 19 labs on PI Pages, $321M a year on research, 271 research doctorates a year.
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