• Awardees

Devising new strategies to track and prevent breast cancer development in BRCA mutation carriers
Joan Brugge | Harvard Ludwig Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School

  • How do basal and luminal breast cells contribute to BRCA-related cancers?
  • How do BRCA tumor cells evolve?
  • What are the molecular defects during tumor evolution?
  • How do we detection cancer evolution in carriers?
  • How do we intercept and eradicate tumor development?

Dissecting early pathogenesis of BRCA1/2-associated cancer for risk prediction and prevention
Leif Ellisen | Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center

  • What are the early changes in cells of BRCA carrier breast tissue?
  • What are the BRCA cellular vulnerabilities?
  • What are tissue-based markers for prevention approaches?

Interplay and perturbations of the local microbiome and host immune system in breast cancer
Charis Eng | Cleveland Clinic

  • What are the differences in microbes found with normal versus BRCA breast cancers?
  • How do microbes contribute to immune changes and cancer?
  • Could microbiome engineering prevent cancer?

Determinants of immune activity and molecular features in BRCA1/2 mutation carriers
Katherine Nathanson | University of Pennsylvania

  • What are the immune functional status in BRCA carriers?
  • Are there associations between molecular and immune status with therapeutic response and survival?

Dissection of BRCA-mediated Tumor Suppression Pathways
Patrick Sung | Univ. of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio

  • What are the regulators of BRCA function?
  • What are BRCA-independent DNA repair pathways?
  • What are the DNA repair mechanisms?
  • What are the drug vulnerabilities of BRCA deficient cells?

Early detection of cancer in high-risk BRCA mutation carriers using liquid biopsies
Victor Velculescu | Johns Hopkins University

  • What are the molecular characteristics of circulation free DNA in BRCA carriers with and without cancer?
  • What is the strategy for screening?
Last updated on March 9, 2023