Dr. Alexis LeVee, a clinical instructor in the division of hematology/oncology and investigator at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, has received a grant from Kure It Cancer Research to support her research into metaplastic breast cancer, a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer with few effective treatment options.
The award will support LeVee’s efforts to better understand the unique biology of these tumors and uncover molecular features that may help guide more personalized treatment approaches, including the use of newer precision therapies such as antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs).
Metaplastic breast cancer accounts for less than 1% of all breast cancers and is associated with poorer outcomes compared with more common breast cancer subtypes. Because the disease is rare and biologically complex, patients are often underrepresented in clinical trials, limiting the evidence available to guide treatment decisions.
“Patients with metaplastic breast cancer have historically had limited treatment options, in part because we do not yet fully understand the biology of these tumors,” said LeVee. “This support will help us identify the features that make these cancers sensitive to specific therapies and move us closer to a more personalized treatment approach.”
LeVee and her team will analyze clinical data and tumor samples to investigate how specific biomarkers, including HER2, TROP-2 and genetic alterations involved in cancer growth pathways, influence responses to targeted therapies and ADCs. The researchers also aim to identify molecular markers that could help predict which patients are most likely to benefit from these treatments. The team will study tumor samples from patients treated with the HER2-targeting ADC trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) to better understand why some tumors respond to therapy while others do not and use proteomic analyses to better define protein-level characteristics that influence treatment response.
