Millie Nathanson

Breast cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer in women worldwide. Estrogen receptor positive breast cancer (ER+) accounts for the majority of the breast cancer diagnoses made each year. There are different treatments given to patients depending on the stage of their cancer. While there is a vast variety of treatments, a fraction of ER+ breast cancer patients experience relapse after five years of treatment. For the betterment of womens’ health everywhere, there needs to be an improvement in this staggeringly high relapse rate. Attention has been given to the possibility that combinatorial treatments need to be tested. This study has already investigated the drug Birinapant which is an inducer of cell death and will also investigate RBN-239, which promotes anti-cancer immunity. These drugs were tested alongside external focal radiation on highly metastatic mouse mammary adenocarcinoma cell lines (TS/A). A flow cytometer was used to determine the correct dosage amount of medication in the preliminary experiment and a QPCR machine was used in the central experiment to analyze the RNA to indicate the amount of IFNβ created by the radiation and medication together after both 24 and 48 hours. The most successful treatment order for secreting IFNβ after 24 hours is radiotherapy followed by Birinapant, and for optimal secretion after 48 hours, Birinapant followed by radiotherapy is the best. Following testing on Birinapant, testing on RBN-2397 will be conducted (in progress). Then, the study will most likely expand to testing both drugs together with radiation while probably lengthening the time-span of the collection.

Research Paper