Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
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Ruth O’Regan

mTOR inhibitors gaining favor for breast cancer treatment

This week, breast cancer researchers have been reporting encouraging clinical trial results with the drug everolimus at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. Everolimus is a mTOR inhibitor, first approved by the FDA for treatment of kidney cancer and then for post-transplant control of the immune system.

Ruth O’Regan, MD, director of the Translational Breast Cancer Research Program at Winship Cancer Institute, has led clinical studies of everolimus in breast cancer and has championed the strategy of combining mTOR inhibitors with current treatments for breast cancer.

She recently explained the rationale to the NCI Cancer Bulletin:

She views the combination therapy as a potential alternative to chemotherapy for treating ER-positive advanced breast cancer when hormonal therapies have stopped working.

When resistance to hormonal therapies occurs, Dr. O’Regan explained, additional signaling pathways become activated. Unlike chemotherapy, which targets rapidly dividing cells, mTOR inhibitors are an example of the kind of treatment that may block growth-promoting signaling pathways.

Currently, Winship researchers are examining a combination involving everolimus and the EGFR inhibitor lapatinib for “triple-negative” breast cancer, a particularly aggressive and difficult-to-treat variety.

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Quinn Eastman in Cancer Leave a comment

HER2-positive breast cancer treatment options studied

Emory oncologist Ruth O’Regan, MD, is leading a trial testing whether Afinitor can reverse resistance to Herceptin in metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer patients. As part of the trial, some patients been receiving a drug called Afinitor (everolimus) along with chemotherapy and Herceptin (trastuzumab).

Ruth O'Regan, MD

About 25 percent to 30 percent of breast cancers are HER2 -positive, which means they test positive for a protein called human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2). This protein promotes the growth of cancer cells, making HER2 -positive breast cancers more aggressive than other types.

They also tend to be less responsive to hormone treatment. That’s the bad news. The good news is that this type of cancer responds extremely well to Herceptin.

Herceptin specifically targets HER2 cells, killing them while sparing healthy cells, so side effects are minimal. Its effectiveness has made Herceptin the gold standard of treatment for HER2 -positive breast cancer.

Read more

Posted on April 20, 2010 by admin in Cancer Leave a comment