Dr. Naoto Ueno
This project seeked to develop preclinical evidence about the effectiveness of statins in IBC models to determine whether a randomized clinical trial is warranted. This followed from an epidemiological finding that in IBC patients, those taking a statin from the hydrophilic class had better outcomes than non-statin users. This paper was original published in July 2013 in the British Journal of Cancer (https://www.nature.com/articles/bjc2013342).
Follow up research directly from our research funding includes 2 publications described below, which collectively provide strong rationale for a clinical trial, which is the subject of our more recent funding (February 2016).
The first paper looked at the role of simvastatin to enhance the effects of radiation, which is a critical component of IBC treatment and especially important when chemotherapy has done a sub-optimal job. This research did find that simvastatin could potentiate radiation including targeting the radiation-resistant stem cells. The paper may be read at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
Follow up to simvastatin
A follow up study was also published in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment. The research used metastatic models of triple negative breast cancer (including 1 IBC cell line), and demonstrated that simvastatin significantly reduced metastatic potential and stem-cell features. The mechanism underlying this phenomenon is also described in the abstract which can be read at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/