Millie Nathanson

Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in women worldwide. Estrogen receptor positive breast cancer (ER+) accounts for the majority of breast cancer diagnoses made each year. While there are a variety of treatments, many ER+ breast cancer patients relapse after five years of treatment. There needs to be an improvement in this relapse rate. Attention has been given to the possibility that combination treatments need to be tested. This study investigated the drugs Birinapant and RBN-2397 (a newer immunotherapy which has only recently started to be tested in humans). Specifically, it investigated their impact on the secretion of interferon-beta (IFNβ), which is a cytokine that sparks downstream gene transcription. These drugs were tested alongside external focal radiation on metastatic mouse mammary adenocarcinoma (TS/A) and spontaneously developing medullary breast adenocarcinoma (E0771) cell lines. qPCR was used in the central experiment to analyze the RNA to indicate the amount of interferon-beta created by the radiation and medication together after both 24 and 48 hours. Data suggested that Birinapant in combination with radiotherapy does not yield significant results in terms of the secretion of IFNβ in TS/A cell lines. However, RBN-2397 in combination with radiotherapy did yield significant results in terms of the secretion of IFNβ in TS/A cell lines and E0771 cell lines. This treatment is most promising in E0771 cell lines after 48 hours and should be pursued further, possibly as a novel treatment in mice models of human ER+ breast cancer.  

Research Paper

2024 JSHS Semi-Finalist