Together we can end breast cancer.

Thanks to the incredible generosity of The Lynn Sage Foundation community, we are thrilled to announce Dr. Dai Horiuchi as our THIRD Lynn Sage Scholar in 2017!

Dr. Horiuchi is an Associate Professor of Pharmacology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and a member of the Translational Research in Solid Tumors Program at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University.  The goal of his ongoing basic and translational breast cancer research is to identify and validate novel therapeutic strategies for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), which is the breast cancer subtype with the poorest clinical outcome. Triple-negative tumors present serious challenges due to limited insights into the mechanisms of tumor generation and progression, as well as a lack of validated therapeutic targets. 

The past two decades of breast cancer research have given rise to some molecularly targeted therapies and gene expression-based diagnostic tools. These clinical tools have helped to slow disease progression in some forms of breast cancer and have helped doctors predict who has a higher likelihood of responding to a given therapy, thus paving the way to the era of personalized medicine. However, doctors still face a significant number of breast cancer patients who either do not respond well to any existing therapies or eventually experience a recurrence of tumors that have become resistant to therapies which were previously effective. These cases account for the actual breast cancer-related mortality rate, which has not substantially improved over the past decade.  This is particularly the case for patients with TNBC.

Dr. Horiuchi’s laboratory is poised to better understand the biology of these tumors and to validate novel therapeutic concepts, setting the foundation for early stage human clinical trials.  In collaboration with clinicians at Northwestern Medicine and with pharmaceutical partners, Dr. Horiuchi is dedicated to bringing his laboratory findings to clinical testing.  His overarching goal is to significantly reduce TNBC-related mortality for the estimated 35% of patients in need of life-saving treatment.

Because of your wonderful generosity, The Lynn Sage Foundation is proud to include Drs. Dai Horiuchi, Marc Mendillo, and Abde Abukhdeir in the Lynn Sage Scholars program for 2017.   Please consider continuing your support.  Together, we will change the trajectory of breast cancer. 

With deepest gratitude,

Laura & Halee

Links:

• The Lynn Sage Foundation