Research Summaries

Quick facts about recent research

Since 2007, breast cancer scientists around the world have been searching for a cure using normal tissue samples supplied by the Komen Tissue Bank at the IU Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center. Our research collaborators include federal agencies, prestigious universities, pharmaceutical companies, and renowned non-profit organizations. However, it is important that anyone who wants to understand this important science is able to do so. We have, therefore, provided short, easy-to-read (and hopefully easy-to-understand) summaries of these complex manuscripts. If you have any questions, please email komentb@iu.edu.

127 publications available

Spatial N-glycomics of the normal breast microenvironment reveals fucosylated and high-mannose N-glycan signatures related to BI-RADS density and ancestry.

Rujchanarong D, Spruill L, et al. Glycobiology 2024 Jun; 34(8) .The breast stroma is the tissue that surrounds and supports the parts of the breast that make milk—it includes things like fat, blood vessels, and c...

Research Summaries

Quick facts about recent research

Spatial N-glycomics of the normal breast microenvironment reveals fucosylated and high-mannose N-glycan signatures related to BI-RADS density and ancestry.

Investigating phenotypic plasticity due to toxicants with exposure disparities in primary human breast cells .

Stromal heterogeneity may explain increased incidence of metaplastic breast cancer in women of African descent.

Host, reproductive, and lifestyle factors in relation to quantitative histologic metrics of the normal breast.

Exploring breast tissue microbial composition and the association with breast cancer risk factors.

Outdoor air pollution and histologic composition of normal breast tissue.

TONSL Is an Immortalizing Oncogene and a Therapeutic Target in Breast Cancer.

Immune cells are increased in normal breast tissues of BRCA1/2 mutation carriers.

Association of Genetic Ancestry With Terminal Duct Lobular Unit Involution Among Healthy Women.

Mapping hormone-regulated cell-cell interaction networks in the human breast at single-cell resolution.

Towards defining morphologic parameters of normal parous and nulliparous breast tissues by artificial intelligence.

Composition and Functional Potential of the Human Mammary Microbiota Prior to and Following Breast Tumor Diagnosis.

A human breast atlas integrating single-cell proteomics and transcriptomics.

A Novel Qualitative Approach for Identifying Effective Communication for Recruitment of Minority Women to a Breast Cancer Prevention Study

The impact of reproductive factors on DNA methylation-based telomere length in healthy breast tissue.

Acquisition, processing, and single-cell analysis of normal human breast tissues from a biobank.

FAM83A is a potential biomarker for breast cancer initiation.

Aberrant epigenetic and transcriptional events associated with breast cancer risk.

Racial Differences in Cumulative Disadvantage Among Women and Its Relation to Health: Development and Preliminary Validation of the Cumulative Stress Inventory of Women's Experiences.

Metabolic Links to Socioeconomic Stresses Uniquely Affecting Ancestry in Normal Breast Tissue at Risk for Breast Cancer.

Bidirectional Regulatory Cross-Talk between Cell Context and Genomic Aberrations Shapes Breast Tumorigenesis.

Breast Cancer Endocrine Therapy Promotes Weight Gain With Distinct Adipose Tissue Effects in Lean and Obese Female Mice.

Hormonally Regulated Myogenic miR-486 Influences Sex-specific Differences in Cancer-induced Skeletal Muscle Defects.

The Effects of Lifetime Estrogen Exposure on Breast Epigenetic Age.

A single-cell atlas of the healthy breast tissues reveals clinically relevant clusters of breast epithelial cells.

Inflammation markers on benign breast biopsy are associated with risk of invasive breast cancer in African American women.

Mammary mechanobiology - investigating roles for mechanically activated ion channels in lactation and involution.

Leveraging Multi-Task Learning to Cope With Poor and Missing Labels of Mammograms.

Multiscale imaging of basal cell dynamics in the functionally mature mammary gland.

Outdoor air pollution and terminal duct lobular involution of the normal breast.

A risk-associated Active transcriptome phenotype expressed by histologically normal human breast tissue and linked to a pro-tumorigenic adipocyte population.

Breast Heterogeneity: Obstacles to Developing Universal Biomarkers of Breast Cancer Initiation and Progression.

Estimating breast tissue-specific DNA methylation age using next-generation sequencing data.

A Computational Statistics Approach to Evaluate Blood Biomarkers for Breast Cancer Risk Stratification.

Polygenic risk score for the prediction of breast cancer is related to lesser terminal duct lobular unit involution of the breast.

Upregulation of lipid metabolism genes in the breast prior to cancer diagnosis.

Characterization of weaning-induced breast involution in women: implications for young women's breast cancer.

Flower isoforms promote competitive growth in cancer.

Dual TGFβ/BMP Pathway Inhibition Enables Expansion and Characterization of Multiple Epithelial Cell Types of the Normal and Cancerous Breast.

Death effector domain-containing protein induces vulnerability to cell cycle inhibition in triple-negative breast cancer.

Free Fatty Acids Rewire Cancer Metabolism in Obesity-Associated Breast Cancer via Estrogen Receptor and mTOR Signaling.

Genetic Ancestry-dependent Differences in Breast Cancer-induced Field Defects in the Tumor-adjacent Normal Breast.

Pregnancy Hypertension and a Commonly Inherited IGF1R Variant (rs2016347) Reduce Breast Cancer Risk by Enhancing Mammary Gland Involution.

Normal Breast-Derived Epithelial Cells with Luminal and Intrinsic Subtype-Enriched Gene Expression Document Interindividual Differences in Their Differentiation Cascade.

Increased epigenetic age in normal breast tissue from luminal breast cancer patients.

Serum insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-I and IGF binding protein-3 in relation to terminal duct lobular unit involution of the normal breast in Caucasian and African American women: The Susan G. Komen Tissue Bank.

Applying the Health Belief Model and an Integrated Behavioral Model to Promote Breast Tissue Donation Among Asian Americans.

Analytical Pipeline for Discovery and Verification of Glycoproteins from Plasma-Derived Extracellular Vesicles as Breast Cancer Biomarkers.

Development of a New Monochrome Multiplex qPCR Method for Relative Telomere Length Measurement in Cancer.

Triple-Negative Breast Cancer, Stem Cells, and African Ancestry.

A plasma telomeric cell-free DNA level in unaffected women with BRCA1 or/and BRCA2 mutations: a pilot study.

Inflammatory signatures distinguish metabolic health in African American women with obesity.

African American Women's Perspectives on Donating Healthy Breast Tissue for Research: Implications for Recruitment.

Relationships Among Obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, and Plasma Cytokines in African American Women.

Heterogeneous drug penetrance of veliparib and carboplatin measured in triple negative breast tumors.

Alterations in the Immune Cell Composition in Premalignant Breast Tissue that Precede Breast Cancer Development.

Normal breast tissue DNA methylation differences at regulatory elements are associated with the cancer risk factor age.

DNA methylation age is elevated in breast tissue of healthy women.

Phosphoproteins in extracellular vesicles as candidate markers for breast cancer.

Association between breast cancer genetic susceptibility variants and terminal duct lobular unit involution of the breast.

Dual PI3K and Wnt pathway inhibition is a synergistic combination against triple negative breast cancer.

Tissue-specific Co-expression of Long Non-coding and Coding RNAs Associated with Breast Cancer.

Ages at menarche- and menopause-related genetic variants in relation to terminal duct lobular unit involution in normal breast tissue.

Breast cancer risk variants at 6q25 display different phenotype associations and regulate ESR1, RMND1 and CCDC170.

Aberrant reduction of telomere repetitive sequences in plasma cell-free DNA for early breast cancer detection.

Ethnicity-Dependent and -Independent Heterogeneity in Healthy Normal Breast Hierarchy Impacts Tumor Characterization.

Aberrant methylation of imprinted genes is associated with negative hormone receptor status in invasive breast cancer.

Motivations, concerns, and experiences of women who donate normal breast tissue.

Whole-genome bisulfite sequencing of cell-free DNA identifies signature associated with metastatic breast cancer.

Circulating sex hormones and terminal duct lobular unit involution of the normal breast.

Parent-of-origin-specific allelic associations among 106 genomic loci for age at menarche.

Terminal duct lobular unit involution of the normal breast: implications for breast cancer etiology.

The molecular landscape of the normal human breast--defining normal.

Phenotypic plasticity in normal breast derived epithelial cells.

Immune cell quantitation in normal breast tissue lobules with and without lobulitis.

Postpartum breast involution reveals regression of secretory lobules mediated by tissue-remodeling.

Next-generation transcriptome sequencing of the premenopausal breast epithelium using specimens from a normal human breast tissue bank.

KIF14 promotes AKT phosphorylation and contributes to chemoresistance in triple-negative breast cancer.