Hartman Lab
Principal Investigator: Zachary Conrad Hartman
Institution: Duke University (Durham, NC)
Primary Subfield: Molecular & Cell Bio
Recruitment Status: ✅ Accepting PhD Students
Research Focus
ABSTRACT Although cancer screening has led to improved detection of early-stage cancers, many cancers can recur and metastasize several years later. In breast cancer, there is a growing and urgent need to develop therapeutics that intercept cancer cells before they invade and disseminate. For instance, although targeted therapies against erb-b2 receptor tyrosine kinase 2 (ERBB2 or HER2) have proven highly successful, metastasis is untreatable. Preliminary data reveal how isoforms of HER2 that are associated with treatment resistance and recurrent metastases – e.g. the exon 16 null isoform (..........and the N-terminally truncated isoform (p95) – elicit distinct tumor phenotypes. Our own observations in a mouse model of HER2 isoform heterogeneity demonstrate that p95 HER2 drives early transitions to motile and invasive behaviors prior to detection. This is in stark contrast to ........or wild-type HER2 (WT)-driven murine mammary cancers that proliferate and are generally detectable prior to invasion. Thus, understanding how HER2 isoforms signal in vivo could provide new opportunities for preventing or treating metastatic breast cancers. The objective here is to determine how isoform…
Active NIH Awards
- 1R01CA310024-01A1: Functionally selective signaling of HER2 isoforms controls early dissemination and immune escape (2026)
- 5R01CA238217-05: Enabling effective anti-tumor immunity from targeted antibodies through dual innate and adaptive immune checkpoint blockade in non-immunogenic cancers (2024)
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