Transforming Endocrine Therapy for Breast and Prostate Cancer
Better health through research.
The Dame Roma Mitchell Cancer Research Laboratories (DRMCRL) conducts outstanding research to better understand and improve disease outcomes for people afflicted with breast or prostate cancer.
Our world-class cancer research centre has a multidisciplinary team of scientists, clinicians and consumer advocates dedicated to understanding how sex hormone receptors drive breast and prostate cancer development and progression, with research programs spanning discovery, drug development and clinical translation. By studying both diseases, we gain unique insights into hormone-mediated carcinogenesis.
The DRMCRL has pioneered unique pre-clinical models of breast and prostate cancer to facilitate clinical translation, including patient-derived explant (PDE), xenograft (PDX), organoid (PDO), as well as mammary intraductal (MIND) model systems. Using patient-derived models allows us to better understand disease mechanisms, develop new drug targets, and test new therapeutic strategies in a manner more likely to be clinically relevant.
Our recent breakthrough study using patient derived models that reflect the human disease, demonstrated that AR activation potently and durably inhibits the growth of ER+ breast cancer, including cancers resistant to current standard of care drugs (Hickey et al Nature Medicine 2021). This finding rapidly led to clinical trials of androgenic drugs in ER+ breast cancer. Given the safety profile of new generation androgenic drugs and their known beneficial effects on female health and quality-of-life, AR activation is also a highly attractive strategy for breast cancer prevention.
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