Drs. Brian and Mary Law and their associates focus on the identification of new breast cancer therapeutics. The lab’s primary objective is to develop innovative breast cancer therapies. Breast cancer remains a leading cause of mortality, despite the presence of various drugs on the market. Dr. Law spoke about two factors that cause this issue: metastasis and drug resistance. Once cancer cells have these qualities, they become unresponsive to currently available therapies. The overarching goal of the lab is to identify drugs that effectively target the most aggressive, late-stage cancers.
For cancer cells to metastasize, they must separate or detach from each other and survive that separation. One goal of the lab is to find out if they can prevent this detachment if they can kill the cancer cells once that have detached. This involves research on the differences between cell adhesion molecules between cancer and normal cells.
In collaboration with the Castellano Lab, in the Department of Chemistry, Dr. Law and his lab developed a series of compounds that selectively kill cancer cells that overexpress certain receptors, including EGFR (Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor) and HER2 (Human Epidermal growth factor Receptor 2). To understand how these compounds worked to achieve this, the lab synthesized a library of analogs and evaluated them in tumor studies. The results of this were promising. To fully understand what exactly these compounds were targeting, probes with biotin tags were developed by the lab, which allowed the identification of target proteins. This led to the discovery that the compounds target enzymes, Protein Disulfide Isomerases, that play a crucial role in the production of receptor proteins.
The lab is currently investigating the decision-making process of cancer cells regarding receptor expression. The goal is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the complex mechanisms involved in cancer cell behavior. This will lead to designing therapies to combat this behavior and prevent cancer from developing all together. The intricacies of this research area pose significant challenges; however, the Law lab is committed to addressing these through innovative research and multidisciplinary collaborations.