Dc. Vivanco Group

Breast cancer remains the most common tumour and the leading cause of cancer death among women. Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease, which complicates diagnosis and challenges therapy. There is still much to learn about the mechanisms by which some cells develop resistance to anti-cancer treatments, why treatment fails and when the tumour reappears the recurrent tumour is more aggressive, and how cells escape from the tumour to initiate metastasis. Breast tumours contain different cell types, including cells with characteristics of stem cells, cancer stem cells (CSCs), which are responsible for tumour initiation and development of resistance to therapies. In the laboratory we are investigating the heterogeneity of breast cancer and the mechanisms of resistance to hormonal therapy used against breast tumours that express the estrogen receptor, ER, which represent approximately 75% of all cases. We hope that this knowledge will facilitate the identification of new forms of therapy that, combined with current approaches, will result in more effective treatments to improve survival and quality of life of breast cancer patients. In the laboratory we use cell models of resistance to endocrine therapies, as well as fresh breast tissue (healthy and tumour), and employ a wide variety of techniques, including collaborations with chemists, physicists and mathematicians, to explore from different angles the complexity of breast cancer, improve our understanding of cancer from a molecular point of view, and try to design new approaches to stratify patients and provide new strategies to reduce or eliminate the risk of development of resistance and prevent metastasis.

The studies that are being carried out in the laboratory are currently focused on understanding better the mechanisms by which nuclear receptors, with particular emphasis on the estrogen receptor (ER), influence the behaviour of healthy and cancer breast stem cells. The research focuses on the involvement of cancer stem cells in the process of development of resistance to hormone therapy in breast cancer and on the relevance of cancer heterogeneity in the response to the tumour microenvironment.