We are a team of undergraduate and graduate students working relentlessly with Dr. Bailey to identify a druggable target to treat metastatic triple negative breast cancer.
Why do we study metastatic triple negative breast cancer?
According to the 2017 Arkansas Cancer Facts and Figures report the 5-year breast cancer mortality rate was 30.5 per 100,000 Black women compared to 20.7 per 100,000 for White women.
Why African American (AA) women have a higher breast cancer mortality rate in comparison to European American (EA) women is a provocative question in cancer.
Breast cancer is primarily divided into four subtypes including Luminal A, Luminal B, Human Epidermal Receptor 2 positive or enriched, and Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) and/or Basal-like.
TNBC is most common and most lethal in premenopausal AA women.
Metastatic progression, chemoresistance, radioresistance and tumor recurrence are the main barriers in curative therapy for TNBC. TNBC has a propensity to metastasize to the brain. The development of TNBC brain metastases can shorten the lifespan of a patient and reduce their quality of life.
The goal of our laboratory is to identify and to characterize the molecular determinants of the metastatic biology of TNBC. Specifically we focus on TNBC brain and liver metastases.