Understanding what protects a cell

Sylvie and her research team want to understand what goes wrong when a cell transforms into a cancer cell, by focusing on cellular processes that protect cells from damage to their DNA. In more detail, they are studying the function of the protein BRCA1, often defective in familiar cases of breast and ovarian cancer. This protein is a crucial and versatile gatekeeper of our genome. In her laboratory, they study how its different roles are coordinated and how defects in the individual roles affect cancer onset. 

‘We are still far from understanding exactly how breast cancer develops. What keeps me curious is that every answer raises another ten new questions to explore.’

Finding new opportunities for therapy

By better understanding how tumours originate and what prevents tumour formation, Sylvie and her team hope to identify processes that can be targeted with therapies. For example, they are specifically looking for vulnerabilities of tumour cells with defects in BRCA1. These vulnerabilities could provide new targets for selectively killing these cancer cells. Sylvie: 'Although our findings need to be followed up by drug development programmes, we hope to provide such novel opportunities for therapy.' 

Looking beyond the average

Sylvie shares that she remembers once looking at a graph showing differences in therapy response among patients treated with two different drugs. Although, on average, there was a clear benefit of one drug over the other, what struck her at that point were the inter-individual differences in both groups. 

'Since then, I have been very motivated to understand the heterogeneity in breast cancer development and treatment response.'