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Breast Cancer: Targets and Therapy

ISSN: 1179-1314


Professor Pranela Rameshwar

Professor Rameshwar

Department of Medicine - Hematology-Oncology, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ, USA

Professor Pranela Rameshwar obtained her education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI, USA and Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey, USA. Her main academic appointment is at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Department of Medicine-Hematology/Oncology. Professor Rameshwar also has an appointment at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. She is also a member of the joint doctoral program in biomedical engineering between University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and New Jersey Institute of New Jersey.

Her research interests are focused on the mechanism by which breast cancer cells adapt a quiescence phenotype within the stromal compartment of bone marrow. Her laboratory also studies neural regulation of hematopoiesis, the immunology of adult human mesenchymal stem cells, and future potential for mesenchymal stem cells in various clinical disorders. Professor Rameshwar has received research grant funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, the F.M. Kirby Foundation, New Jersey Cancer Commission, and numerous other funding agencies. She has published widely on  research related to stem cell biology and breast cancer.


Dr Pooja Advani

Dr Advani

Department of Hematology and Oncology, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, FL, USA

Dr. Pooja Advani is a Consultant and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic. She earned her medical degree in Mumbai, India and completed her residency at the State University of New York. She is a graduate of the Mayo Clinic Hematology and Oncology Fellowship program where she also served as the Chief Fellow.

She is a breast medical oncologist and the Director of the Robert and Monica Jacoby Center for Breast Health at Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville. She is a laboratory-based physician-scientist. Her current research interests are centered on understanding and leveraging the molecular underpinnings of cancer biology to help develop novel therapeutics to improve patient outcomes.

Dr. Advani has authored several peer reviewed publications in prestigious journals, editorials, and book chapters. She has been a recipient of a number of grant funding in support of her research interests including NIH, and Department of Defense funding. She also serves as the principal investigator of several Phase II/III breast cancer clinical trials including investigator-initiated trials.

Dr. Advani serves as a core faculty member for the Mayo Clinic Florida Hematology-Oncology fellowship program and career advisor for medical students. She has also earned several awards for excellence in patient care.


Professor Robert Clarke

Professor Clarke

Executive Director Cancer Systems Biology, The Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota, MN, USA

An internationally recognized leader in breast cancer research, Dr. Robert Clarke studies how hormones, growth factors, and other related factors affect breast cancer, and how breast cancers become resistant to hormonal and cytotoxic chemotherapies. He is the Executive Director of Cancer Systems Biology at The Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota. He has broad expertise that includes estrogens, antiestrogens, aromatase inhibitors, cell signaling, bioinformatics, drug resistance, signal transduction, and systems biology.

Dr. Clarke and his colleagues have recently identified a new, integrative systems-based molecular signaling model in breast cancer that incorporates cell stress signaling, protein misfolding (unfolded protein response), and communication among the endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria, and nucleus of breast cancer cells. Ultimately, this network determines if a breast cancer cell will grow, differentiate or die, and the mechanism by which the cell will die in response to therapy.


Professor Harikrishna Nakshatri

Professor Nakshatri

Professor of Surgery, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA

Harikrishna Nakshatri, B.V.Sc., Ph.D., is the Marian J. Morrison Chair of Breast Cancer Research and Professor of Surgery, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He is also the Associate Director for Education at the Indiana University Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center. He serves as a Research Career Scientist at the VA Roudebush Medical center. In addition, he is the Chief Scientific Officer of the Susan G. Komen Tissue Bank. He served as a Susan G. Komen Scholar 2010-2020 and was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) in 2021.

Dr. Nakshatri studies the molecular drivers of therapy resistance in breast cancer. His laboratory was the first to identify the role of the protein complex, NF-kappaB, which controls genes that respond to environmental stress and infection, in triple negative breast cancer. He also identified biomarkers that may predict response to anti-estrogen therapy. Utilizing normal breast tissues of women of different ethnic/racial background, his group has discovered genetic ancestry-dependent heterogeneity in the normal breast, which has important implications on how tumors are characterized for genomic abnormalities. His recently published studies may enable to understand why hormone-responsive breast tumors are more common in women of European ancestry and why triple negative breast cancers are aggressive in women of African ancestry. Additionally, his group has mapped the normal breasts as well as the breasts of BRCA1/2 mutation careers at single cell resolution using single cell sequencing techniques. These efforts may lead to classification of breast cancer based on “cell-of-origin” of tumor. He is using systems biology approaches to understand organ specific breast cancer metastasis and developing patient-derived tumor models that reflect organ-specific metastasis and therapy resistance.


Editorial Board

Emmanuel T. Akporiaye, Founder and CEO, Veana Therapeutics, Inc., Adjunct Full Member, Earle A. Chiles Research Institute, Providence Cancer Institute, Adjunct Scientist, Legacy Research Institute, Legacy Health, Portland OR, USA.

Hamid Band, Elizabeth Bruce Professor of Cancer Research, Eppley Institute for Research in Cancer and Allied Diseases, Director, Center for Breast Cancer, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, USA

Abhijit De, M.Phil., Ph.D., Scientific Officer ‘G’ and Principal Investigator, Head, Molecular functional imaging laboratory, Advanced Centre of Teaching Research and Education in Cancer (ACTREC), Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai, India.

Prof. Hesham Elghazaly , Professor of Clinical Oncology, Head of Medical Research Center MASRI, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt.

Ramesh Ganju, Scott Endowed Professor of Pathology, Vice-Chair Experimental Pathology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

Pere Gascón, Director Laboratory of Molecular & Translational Oncology-CELLEX C, Barcelona, Spain

Mark I. Greene, MD, PhD, FRCP, John Eckman Professor of Medical Sciences, Emeritus Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine , Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Jun-Lin Guan, Francis Brunning Chair and Professor, Department of Cancer Biology, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH, USA

Jennifer J. Hu, Professor, Public Health Sciences, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, FL, USA

H Phillip Koeffler, Professor, Division of Hematology and Oncology, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Senior Principal Investigator, Cancer Science Institute of Singapore, National University of Singapore; Professor, Department of Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore; Professor, National University Cancer Institute of Singapore, National University Hospital, Singapore

Rong Li, Chair and Professor, Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Medicine, School of Medicine & Health Sciences, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA.

Dan Liebermann, Professor of The Fels Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular biology; Professor of Medical Genetics & Molecular Biochemistry, Temple Univ. School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA

James A McCubrey, Distinguished Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA

Kathleen McEnnis, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), USA. 

Lida Mina, Senior associate consultant and chair, Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, USA.

George Robert Nahas, University of Miami Health System, Miami, FL, USA.

Jimmy S. Patel, MD, PhD, Emory Radiation Oncology PGY2, Emory Winship Cancer Institute, USA.

Ratna B Ray, Professor, Department of Pathology, Saint Louis University, Saint Louis, MO, USA

Avraham Raz, Paul Zuckerman Professor of Oncology, Pathology and Radiation Oncology, Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, Wayne State University, School of Medicine, Detroit, MI, USA

Stephen H. Safe, Distinguished Professor, Department of Veterinary Physiology and Pharmacology, Texas A&M University and Health Science Center, College Station, TX, USA

Edward L Schwartz Ph.D., Professor of Medicine (Oncology), Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, USA

Lalita Shevde-Samant, Professor, Department of Pathology; Director, Cancer Biology Graduate Theme, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

Seema Singh, Ph.D, Professor, Department of Pathology, Mitchell Cancer Institute, University of South Alabama, Mobile, Alabama, USA

Guangchao Sui, Associate Dean, Professor, Chief of Academic Committee, College of Life Science, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, People's Republic of China.

Jules H. Sumkin, Professor and Chairman Department of Radiology, Endowed chair for women's imaging, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Debra A Tonetti, University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Biopharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, Chicago, IL, USA

Nykia Walker, University of Maryland, USA.

Dennis K Watson, Professor, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; Associate Director, Education and Training, Hollings Cancer Center, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA

Lily Yang, Professor of Surgery and Radiology, Nancy Panoz Chair of Surgery in Cancer Research, Winship Cancer Institute, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA

Dihua Yu, M.D., Ph.D., Professor and Chair Ad Interim, Department of Molecular and Cellular Oncology; Hubert L. and Olive Stringer Distinguished Chair in Basic Science; University Distinguished Teaching Professor; director, Center for Biological Pathways; co-director of the Preclinical and Translational Brain Metastasis Research Program; director of the CCSG Program on Cancer Biology and Metastasis, and director of the Functional Genomics Core of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA.

H.A. Zaren, MD, FACS, Medical Director and Co-Principal Investigator Georgia NCORP, Professor, Dept. of Surgery, The Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, GRA Distinguished Cancer Scientist, Nancy N. and J.C. Lewis Cancer and Research Pavilion, at St. Joseph's/Candler Hospital System in Savannah, GA, USA

Jian-Ting Zhang, Ph.D., Professor and Chair, Helen and Harold McMaster Chair in Biochemistry, Department of Cancer Biology, University of Toledo College of Medicine & Life Sciences, Ohio, USA.