Welcome to the University of Colorado School of Medicine on the Anschutz Medical Campus. A Top Ten Medical School, our departments, centers and institutes work with the University of Colorado Hospital, The Children's Hospital and Barbara Davis Center.

My laboratory focuses on the role of ovarian steroid hormones estradiol and progesterone and their cognate receptors in breast cancer. The most common types of breast cancer are the more differentiated luminal cancers (~70% of all cases), which are estrogen receptor (ER) and usually progesterone receptor (PR) positive. The remaining types of breast tumors are devoid of steroid receptors and include poor prognostic basal breast cancers.

Patients with luminal tumors, despite a better overall prognosis, are still susceptible to tumor recurrence, metastasis, and fatality. Our interest is in the underlying biological cause for these progressions in luminal ER+ breast tumors. We have identified a hormonally-regulated subpopulation of cells within these tumors that express markers of stem cells, and are highly tumorigenic in vivo.

Current studies in the laboratory focus on the mechanism of estrogen and progestin regulation of a cancer stem cell pool in breast cancers as well as in pre-neoplastic human breast tissue. We are also interested in the role these stem cells play in therapy resistance, tumor progression, and metastasis in ER and PR positive luminal breast cancers. We are also screening for novel therapeutic compounds that target these luminal breast cancer stem cells. Other studies are exploring how some luminal ER positive tumor progress to a more untreatable ER negative phenotype.