Harvard Medical School investigators have created the first publicly-available library of reliably expressible proteins in breast cancer. By selecting and expressing a subset of the 1,300 protein-expressing complementary DNAs in the library in a model, they identified novel functions for both well known and lesser-known breast cancer-associated proteins.

According to Joan Brugge, one of the principal investigators in the Breast Cancer 1000 Initiative,

"A significant limitation for breast cancer research has been the inability to distinguish whether certain proteins that are altered in breast tumor cells are the cause or the effect of onversion of normal breast cells to malignancy. The systematic approach that we've enabled and demonstrated will allow researchers to track cancer-causing proteins in simulated environments, with the goal of learning how to impede them."

This proteomic library can be a valuable screening tool for drug companies, as a basis for novel targets to design drugs from.

Source: Harvard Medical School