Unmet Need: Despite widespread research efforts, breast cancer remains the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women. There is an urgent need to identify novel biomarkers and treatment strategies against aggressive forms of breast cancer to improve prognosis and therapy.
Technical Details: Johns Hopkins researchers have identified a novel biomarker for aggressive breast cancers that can inform unique therapeutic strategy. The crystallineβB2 protein (CRYβB2) is an ocular lens protein with a putative role in cell cycle/survival and is known to be upregulated in tumor cells, with highest levels of expression in tumors from African American (AA) women. Investigators demonstrated that CRYβB2 expression correlates with worse disease outcome in primary tumor samples from aggressive triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients. Therefore, the disclosed invention proposes CRYβB2 as a novel biomarker to identify aggressive breast cancer. In addition, researchers identified two targets in CRYβB2 expressing tumors that are sensitized to treatment with established drugs used in the clinic, including nucleolin and CDK4 inhibitors. Overall, CRYβB2 can serve as a novel marker to guide treatment strategies for breast cancer and predict patient outcome.
Value Proposition:
· Novel biomarker CRYβB2 identifies aggressive breast cancer tumors
· CRYβB2+ tumors are sensitized to unique treatment strategies to improve outcomes
· Established drugs in the clinic target candidates that improve outcome in CRYβB2+ tumors
Looking for Partners to: Develop & commercialize the technology as a novel biomarker to improve prognosis and therapy in women with breast cancer.
Stage of Development: Pre-Clinical
Data Availability: In vivo mouse models and primary TNBC tumor samples
Inventors: Vanessa Ferreira Merino, Saraswati Sukumar, Martin Gilbert Pomper
Publications: Yan et al. 2021. CRYβB2 enhances tumorigenesis through up regulation of nucleoli in triple negative breast cancer. Oncogene. doi: 10.1038/s41388-021-01975-3.
