Linking PI3K-AKT-mTOR signaling with metabolic reprograming in breast and ovarian cancers

Speaker bio:

Dr. Pilar Blancafort is an Associate Professor of Cancer Epigenetics at The University of Western Australia and a laboratory head at The Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research. Pilar is currently the head of the cancer program at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research.

She conducted undergraduate studies at the University of Barcelona; she obtained her PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Montreal; she conducted post-doctoral studies at The Scripps Research Institute. In 2005, she established her laboratory at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In 2012, she moved her lab to the University of Western Australia. She holds a Cancer Council of Western Australia, Australian Research Council Future Fellowship and a Wesfarmers fellowship.

In this seminar Pilar will expand on the recent functional characterization of a previously unknown oncogene, AAMDC, as a new regulator of AKT signaling in an aggressive subtype of breast and ovarian cancers. This work suggests that AAMDC represents a novel onco-metabolic switch promoting survival of breast and ovarian cancers in response to metabolic stress conditions, such as estrogen deprivation and DNA damage insults. The detection of AAMDC in breast and ovarian cancers could help identify a cohort of patients at risk to develop resistance to therapies and inform targeted treatment modalities for these patients.