Endocrine Abstracts

Recent years have seen an increasing effort to decode the cancer genome. Most of the studies have focused on the coding genome to identify cancer driver genes. My group is interested in the role of the non-coding genome and its potential contribution to the drive transcriptional aberrations in breast cancer patients. To do so we use a wide-spectrum of techniques including genomic, epigenomics in patient-derived samples. I will present the results of a couple of studies in whic...

Obesity is associated with an increased risk of hormone receptor positive breast cancer after menopause. The aromatase enzyme catalyzes the conversion of androgens into oestrogens and the breast adipose-specific expression of aromatase is hypothesized to be a major driver of breast cancer growth when ovarian oestrogen biosynthesis has ceased. We have found that aromatase is elevated in breast adipose stromal cells in relation to obesity and menopausal status. Furthermore, obes...

Estrogen Receptor alpha (ER) is the key driver in the majority of all breast cancers, and considered the main target for therapy. However, resistance to treatment is common and biomarkers to facilitate optimal treatment selection are urgently needed. Even though the vast majority of breast cancer patients are female, breast cancer can develop in men as well. Using chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by massive-parallel sequencing (ChIP-seq), we identified the genome-wide ch...