SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. — Shepherd University President Dr. Mary Hendrix is the senior author of findings published in the journal “Cell Cycle” about the molecule Nodal, which holds promise as a novel target in treating aggressive cancers, especially triple-negative breast cancer.
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive, difficult to treat form of cancer that requires new therapeutic targets to be identified.
Hendrix is part of the team whose preliminary data show great promise as a way to curb the spread of breast cancer and other aggressive cancers that are resistant to current therapies.
“My laboratory and I made a very exciting discovery that we’ve been trying to develop,” Hendrix told WEPM in November 2015. “Most recently we’re developing it in partnership with a pharmaceutical company.”
Hendrix said they were able to transition their discovery to a company that will take it to the next level.
“[the company will] further develop it and really look for the promise of this work for new cancer therapies and diagnostics,” Hendrix said last year.
Before coming to Shepherd Hendrix had served as president and chief scientific officer of Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago’s Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
She said that this type of breakthrough is a dream come true and the perfect way to finish her career as a scientist.
“It is the dream of every basic scientist to make a discovery that would eventually transfer to a clinical setting and help cancer patients.”
In the invited commentary on the research, “Targeting the Untargetable? Nodal Expression in TNBC”–Cell Cycle News and Views, Eric D. Young and Danny R. Welch said, “This paper establishes several findings with great potential for future clinical application.” They note that combinations such as those proposed in this paper would provide patients with less residual disease and lower toxicity from chemotherapy.
The study was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Northwestern Memorial Foundation Dixon Translational Research Grant. Additional support was received through a Junior Investigator Award from the Brinson Foundation and the Kennedy Foundation at Presence Saint Francis Hospital.
An abstract of the paper is available here.