Identifying key prognostic and predictive targets in breast cancer

Ongoing Research by the Callagy Group (Email: grace.callagy@nuigalway.ie )

• Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease and patients with similar clinical and pathological features can respond differently to the same treatment and can have very different outcomes. Our focus is on triple-negative breast cancer  (TNBC). TNBC is molecularly diverse. Treatment of patients with this subtype of disease has had limited success due to the heterogeneity of the disease. Focusing on TNBC, we use established and new molecular and protein expression techniques to study biomarkers both in cell lines and tissue and finally make correlations with disease severity, response to treatmetna nd overall outcome in the TNBC cohort. Molecular characteristaiton of TNBCs will identify novel biomarkers of progression, outcome and response to therapy. The diagnostic, predictive and prognostic significance of our findings will be evaluated in a uniquue retrospective series of TNBC beast Cancers treated in University Hosptial Galway.

• We investigate a range of novel biomarkers as potential prognostic and therapeutic targets in breast cancer.  In addition, we investigate the molecular events that underpin breast cancer progression through the evaluation of different stages of the disease from early precursor lesions to in situ tumours to invasive disease and metastasis

• Our work is done in close collaboration with the Department Pathology at GUH

• Identification of biomarkers of complex molecular events will ultimately improve diagnosis of breast cancer and further the individualisation of treatment for breast cancer        

 

Lab Members

 Current Postgraduate students

Elaine Walsh (PhD Candidate, School of Medicine Scholarship)

Aliaa Shalaby (MD Candidate)

 

•For a list of Professor Grace Callagy’s recent publications, please click here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=callagy+g

•For a list of Dr. Helen Ingoldsby’s recent publications, please click here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=ingoldsby+h