A team of researchers at Sinai Health and the University of Toronto has identified 90 previously hidden genetic drivers of basal-like breast cancer, the most aggressive and treatment-resistant subtype of the disease, by testing thousands of genes directly inside living tumors for the first time. The findings, published in Nature, open a new map of potential drug targets for a cancer that has long resisted precision therapy because its core molecular drivers were poorly understood.
The study, led by Dr. Daniel Schramek, deputy director of discovery research at Sinai Health and senior investigator at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, and Dr. Khalid Al-Zahrani, an assistant professor of molecular genetics at the University of Toronto's Temerty Faculty of Medicine, used a gene-editing approach the team developed specifically for this purpose. The tool, called CRISPR-KOALA, allows researchers to both disable genes and increase their activity inside living animals, rather than relying on cell cultures, which prior research from the same group had shown miss the majority of relevant cancer drivers.
