Sanchita Bhatnagar
University of California-Davis, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive form of breast cancer. It lacks the three receptors that many breast cancer drugs target.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Genetics
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
triple negative breast cancer
racial disparity
African American women
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2027
What they work on
- Screen TRIM37 gene variants already identified in African American women for anoikis resistance, the ability of cancer cells to survive after detaching, and compare how risk and reference alleles of TRIM37 behave biologically.
- Measure how much TRIM37 contributes to TNBC metastasis in different racial groups, and track TRIM37 and its gene-expression signatures against race, metastasis rates and survival in patient tumor and normal breast tissue.
- Compare metastasis by race-specific breast and TNBC cells that either lack TRIM37 or have extra TRIM37, using spontaneous metastasis mouse models in which tumors spread on their own.
- Test a nanoparticle platform that delivers TRIM37-silencing antisense oligonucleotides, guided by an anti-FOLR1 antibody, in race-specific patient-derived xenografts and in mice with human immune systems.
More about the research
African American women are more likely than women of other backgrounds to develop the metastatic form, in which cancer spreads to distant organs, and they die from it at higher rates. Differences in health care explain part of this gap. The remaining question is whether inherited genetic differences also contribute. The project centers on TRIM37, a cancer-promoting protein, as a possible genetic driver of this disparity.
Why it matters
African American women with metastatic TNBC have a 5-year survival rate of about 14%, compared with 36% for women of other races. Establishing TRIM37 as an inherited risk variant could help identify high-risk patients. Proof-of-concept tests of TRIM37-silencing antisense oligonucleotides, delivered by nanoparticles guided by an investigational anti-FOLR1 antibody, could point toward a targeted treatment for this disease.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ramesh Ganju
Ohio State University, OH·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how S100A7 signaling controls genes that respond to interferon-gamma, especially PD-L1 and Fas, in African American TNBC cells and in engineered mice that overproduce mouse S100a7.
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.
The school
University of California-Davis: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.0B a year on research, 647 research doctorates a year.
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