WRAL News ran a news report on their Health & Life website highlighting a new testing method at UNC that makes breast cancer treatment more efficient. The test, developed by Dr. Gary Johnson and his laboratory at UNC’s Department of Pharmacology, reveals protein activation in breast cancer tumors and may predict drug resistance.
A type of tumor in 20% of breast cancer patients becomes resistant to drugs that are normally effective treatments.
The protein activation test allows you to see how the cancer cells evade the drug. Once the protein pathway of evasion is known, doctors can try new treatment strategies for patients with drug resistant tumors. The new strategies may try to block the cancer cells’ ability to evade the medicine or they may involve trying a new medicine that the patient may respond to better.
UNC researchers have received a $900,000 grant from the Susan B. Komen For The Cure ® for clinical trials with the protein test.
Watch the news video on the WRAL website.
Read more about the award, clinical applications for the protein kinase activation in response to inhibitory drugs in HER2-positive breast cancer in UNC School of Medicine News.