Dr. Marignani uses cutting edge proteomic and genomic strategies to study the communication or signaling pathways between groups of proteins that have developed changes or mutations
August 19, 2014
Windsor native leads study on shutting down power to cancer cells
December 4, 2014
Dalhousie Medical School’s Dr. Paola Marignani and her team have successfully tested a combination of drugs that shuts down aggressive, metabolically active HER2-positive breast cancers.
“By combining the drugs, we were able to hit two critical pathways – the signals that tell cancer cells to grow, and the mitochondria that drive energy production within individual cancer cells,” notes Dr. Marignani, an associate professor in the departments of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Pathology.
“As a result, we found that both the size and overall number of tumours was dramatically reduced. In some cases, we even had a hard time finding tumours to analyze after the treatment was complete.”
This is a promising finding in the fight against HER2-positive breast cancer – a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer that makes up about one-fifth of all breast cancers and can be extremely difficult to treat. The study results were published in the current issue of the high-impact scientific journal, Oncotarget.
Read the full article at https://medicine.dal.ca/news/2014/12/04/turning_off_the_power__dal_scientist_finds_drug_combination_that_stops_growth_of_breast_cancer_cells.html