Publications by authors named "Tess Leftwich"
Article Synopsis
- Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in women, with estrogen receptor positive (ER+) being the most common subtype.
- Improved survival rates for ER+ breast cancer patients are largely thanks to antiestrogen treatments like tamoxifen, but about 30% of patients face recurrence and treatment resistance.
- This study identifies two new combination therapies (simeprevir and VX-680) that, when paired with tamoxifen, significantly lower tumor levels in animal models and could enhance the effectiveness of tamoxifen in treating ER+ breast cancer.
Article Synopsis
- Basal-like triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is tough to treat because of its resistance mechanisms, but it typically has a highly active PI3K pathway instead of PIK3CA mutations.
- BYL-719, a PIK3CA inhibitor with minimal drug interactions, has shown promise in combination therapies, particularly in cases where other treatments have failed.
- Research using patient-derived xenografts identified effective drug combinations involving BYL-719 and other compounds, suggesting a new treatment approach for cancers driven by PIK3CA and related pathways.
The goals of this study were to identify transcriptomic changes that arise in basal-like breast cancer cells during the development of resistance to epidermal growth factor receptor inhibitors (EGFRi) and to identify drugs that are cytotoxic once EGFRi resistance occurs. Human patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) were grown in immunodeficient mice and treated with a set of EGFRi; the EGFRi erlotinib was selected for more expansive in vivo studies. Single-cell RNA sequencing was performed on mammary tumors from the basal-like PDX WHIM2 that was treated with vehicle or erlotinib for 9 weeks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn mammals, the retina is the photosensitive tissue that is responsible for the capture of light and the transduction of the light-initiated signals to the brain. These visual signals help to drive image and non-image forming behaviors. The pupillary light reflex (PLR) is an involuntary non-image forming behavior which involves the constriction of the iris muscle tissue in response to ambient light intensity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn estimated 284,000 Americans will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021. Of these individuals, 15-20% have basal-like triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), which is known to be highly metastatic. Chemotherapy is standard of care for TNBC patients, but chemoresistance is a common clinical problem.
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