Triple-negative breast cancer, which lacks receptors for the three most common hormones known to fuel breast cancer, can be aggressive and difficult to treat. It doesn’t respond to traditional hormone-blocking therapies and is more likely to recur and metastasize after chemotherapy.
Now a researcher at MD Anderson Cancer Center is trying to find better treatments for this often-deadly disease, by thinking about triple-negative breast cancer in a new way. Liuqing Yang was recruited in 2013 to the department of molecular and cellular oncology, with the help of a First-Time Tenure-Track Award from CPRIT. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Diego.
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Triple-negative breast cancer, which lacks receptors for the three most common hormones known to fuel breast cancer, can be aggressive and difficult to treat. It doesn’t respond to traditional hormone-blocking therapies and is more likely to recur and metastasize after chemotherapy.
Now a researcher at MD Anderson Cancer Center is trying to find better treatments for this often-deadly disease, by thinking about triple-negative breast cancer in a new way. Liuqing Yang was recruited in 2013 to the department of molecular and cellular oncology, with the help of a First-Time Tenure-Track Award from CPRIT. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Diego.
Yang is studying the role of a type of RNA in regulating gene networks in triple negative breast cancer. RNA is normally the messenger coded by a gene to create a protein. But not all RNA ends up coding for proteins. Some of it, such as the “long–non-coding RNA” Yang studies, turns out to be crucial for turning on and off other genes, as well as for signaling tumor growth and spread.
These strands of nucleic acids turn out to regulate several very important molecular pathways in triple negative breast cancer, Yang has found. In particular, they seem to let cancer cells fly under the radar of the immune system, escaping surveillance and targeting by killer T cells. These long–non-coding RNAs are found in much higher levels in cancer cells than in normal cells.
Since triple-negative breast cancer cells don’t respond to hormone therapy, and escape from immune system surveillance, they often spread to other organs, particularly brain, bone, and lung. Eventually, these metastases are what cause the death of patients.
Yang has developed a strategy that actually prevents metastasis in mice by shutting down the nefarious activity of long–non-coding RNAs. Since RNA is a single-stranded sequence of nucleotides, his strategy involves synthesizing a so-called “anti-sense” string of nucleotides, complementary to the original strand. Once introduced into a cancer cell, the “anti-sense” strand finds the non-coding RNA and binds to it, like a zipper, shutting it down.
His next goal is to bring the therapy into human clinical trials, in collaboration with clinicians at MD Anderson. Antisense therapies have been clinically approved for a number of diseases, and they are also in clinical trials for other diseases, including cancer. Yang’s would be the first antisense therapy for triple-negative breast cancer. Because the goal of antisense therapy is to make the cancer cells visible to the immune system again, Yang thinks any antisense therapies may be most useful when used in conjunction with immune therapies that rev up T cells to target and kill cancer cells.
“The support from CPRIT has been great,” Yang says. “I think our work will change how we manage treatment for triple-negative breast cancer patients.”
Yang was also part of a team that found that long–non-coding RNAs are what help prostate cancer to grow in the absence of androgens. That work may also lead to a clinical trial aimed at treating this usually deadly type of prostate cancer.
He has also filed four patents related to his research, and received a $1.2 million Department of Defense Breast Cancer Breakthrough Award in 2016, as well as more than $300K in funding for his research from the National Cancer Institute in 2017.
Besides his research to fight breast cancer, Dr. Yang also advocates the importance of fitness to reduce the risk of breast cancer. As a part-time fitness trainer, he voluntarily participates in the community weight loss boot camp to help women manage their body weight.
Yang received his undergraduate degree in biology from Xinjiang University in China, and his Ph.D. in biological science from Georgia State University. He began his postdoctoral training at UCSD in 2006.
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