Anne-Lise Børresen-Dale
Department of Genetics, Institute for Cancer Research, Norwegian Radium Hospital,
Oslo University   Hospital, Oslo

Pharmacogenomic and Breast Cancer

Microarray technologies, applied to the study of DNA/mRNA/miRNA, can be used to portray a tumor’s detailed phenotype in its unique context, and to generate molecular signatures that will improve our understanding of the causes and progression of the disease, for the discovery of new molecular markers, for therapeutic intervention and for developing new prevention strategies. We have performed such analyses of more than 1000 breast carcinomas of different stages and histological types aiming at novel tumour classification that can predict survival and treatment response. The effect of the  patients  own genotype on developing specific molecular profiles in tumor tissue, and genotypes influencing the specific patterns of gene activations that predict important clinical features, like sensitivity to specific therapies and metastatic potential is explored. By integrating data from DNA, mRNA, miRNA and protein we seek to reach a more fundamental understanding of the biological dynamics of breast cancer. This will facilitate identification of risk factors, search for novel cancer diagnostics, prediction of therapeutic effects and prognosis and identification of new targets for therapy. 

Anne-Lise Børresen-Dale (Norway), professor, Ph.D., is among the leading geneticists in research on molecular biology of breast cancer. The group she is heading at the Dept. of Genetics, Inst. for Cancer Research, consists of 35 persons. She is author of 335 scientific papers, 31 chapters in books and invited reviews, and 32 articles in Nordic journals and books. Among several prizes, the most recent are the Swiss Bridge Award for outstanding Cancer Research, 2004 The Möbius prize for outstanding Research from The Research Council of Norway. Børresen-Dale is Member of The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letter, The Royal Academy of Science Norway and is an Honorary doctor of University of Copenhagen.  She is currently the president of EACR (European Association for Cancer Research) and on the board of directors of ECCO (European Cancer Organisation). Her current projects are focusing on Exploring the Systems Biology of Breast Cancer using high dimensional data in integrated approaches aiming at identification of genotypes and gene expression profiles contributing to elevated cancer risk, radiation sensitivity, tumor aggressiveness and therapy resistance. The goal is to follow the linear time course of predisposition, initiation, early stages and advanced disease and to dissect the molecular mechanisms triggered at each stage and to follow the multidimensional interactions at various levels in a systems biology approach to be able to better do risk estimation, prognostication and prediction.