| Clinical Breast Care
Program (CBCP) – Principle Investigator: Colonel Craig
Shriver, MD, FACHE, USA, MC: The Walter Reed
Medical Center/Windber Research Institute Clinical
Breast Care Project of the Comprehensive Reproductive
Systems Care Program (CRSCP) is helping to lead the way
in the fight against breast disorders and cancer. These
efforts focus on decreasing the morbidity and mortality
of breast cancer among American women. The CBCP has a
five pronged-interlocking approach based on its five
pillars: (1) Breast Cancer Risk Reduction, (2)
Biorepository, (3) Focused Research (Including:
Genomics, Proteomics, and Immunology Research), (4)
Biomedical Informatics, and (5) Clinical Care. The
primary objectives of the CBCP are to maintain a unique
translational research paradigm for the clinical care
and research knowledge development of new findings in
breast diseases and cancer, further acquire
characterized biospecimens of all types from all subsets
of patients with breast diseases and cancer, and
leverage the technological advances in genomic and
proteomic laboratory research to further CBCP
discoveries in the molecular biology and pathway
analysis using our CBCP biospecimen repository as the
foundation for new discoveries.
One of the Clinical Breast Care Project’s research
groups, Translational Breast Cancer Research Group, has
undertaken a number of projects including the
identification of chromosomal regions critical to the
development, progression and metastasis of primary
breast tumors, identification of novel genetic factors
contributing to clinical
phenotypes in large families with BRCA1 and BRCA2
mutations and the development of biological models to
differentiate aggressive from indolent Ductal Carcinoma
In Situ (DCIS). The DCIS effort seeks to identify genes
involved in determining the underlying behavior of DCIS
lesions and will move the diagnosis and classification
of DCIS beyond current pathology standards and will
allow women with pre-invasive breast disease to receive
the appropriate, customized treatments. In addition to
work on early breast disease, the group has focused on
identification of genetic causes associated with the
more aggressive type of breast cancer seen in African
American women through the study of genetic admixture,
gene expression and proteomic approaches. Other
research projects include identification of gene
expression signatures associated with breast metastasis,
deciphering the genetic pathways of development of high-
and low-grade breast carcinomas, identification of
polymorphic DNA changes associated with increased risk
of developing breast cancer and assessment of the role
of imprinting in the development of breast cancer.
Together, these efforts will improve our understanding
of the biological processes associated with breast
pathogenesis as well as leading to improved diagnostics
and the development of novel molecular therapeutics to
improve the outcome and quality-of-life for patients
with breast cancer.
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