Find the Cause Breast Cancer Foundation Funds Two Researchers
Find The Cause Breast Cancer Foundation, a nonprofit organization solely dedicated to funding research into the environmental causes of breast cancer and educating the public on prevention, has awarded $580,000 in new research grants to six scientists, including Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine faculty Stefano Monti, PhD, and Xaralabos (Bob) Varelas, PhD.
“The funding that Find The Cause is providing to these extraordinary scientists will directly advance efforts to uncover environmental drivers of breast cancer and, ultimately, lead to cancer prevention,” said David Sherr, PhD, Research Director, Find The Cause Research Consortium.
Stefano Monti, PhD“This funding allows my lab to continue build and analyze large, high-resolution multi-omics atlases of breast and head and neck cancers and to develop computational methods to interrogate these resources,” said Monti, professor of medicine and biostatistics. “Our goal is to dissect intra- and inter-tumor heterogeneity and to understand how environmental exposures, nutrition, and aging influence tumor initiation and progression, ultimately identifying vulnerabilities that may be targeted for cancer prevention and interception.”
Bob Varelas, PhD“We are currently investigating how defects in cell polarity and mechanical cues direct cellular processes that contribute to cancer initiation,” said Varelas, professor of biochemistry & cell biology. “This gift helps fund our work to understand how mechanosensitive factors influence cellular behavior in the mammary gland epithelium, and how defects in mammary tissue mechanics – such as increased tissue stiffness or solid stress – contribute to the etiology of breast cancer.”
The Foundation has invested more than $2.5 million in prevention-focused breast cancer research in the last five years. To learn more about the Foundation’s work and support prevention-based research, visit www.findthecausebcf.org.