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Who could have imagined being in the same Division as Euro postdocs would lead to a world-renowned team-up in breast cancer science?

LeeOesterreich

Drs. Steffi Oesterreich and Adrian Lee discussing reviewers’ comments from ‘Tamoxifen-bound estrogen receptor (ER) strongly interacts with the nuclear matrix protein HET/SAF-B, a novel inhibitor of ER-mediated transactivation. Oesterreich S, Zhang Q, Hopp T, Fuqua SA, Michaelis M, Zhao HH, Davie JR, Osborne CK, Lee AV. Mol Endocrinol. 2000 Mar;14(3):369-81. doi: 10.1210/mend.14.3.0432.PMID: 10707955.

This is taken in 1999 in our lab when we first started in Dr. Oesterreich’s office as Junior Faculty – in the middle of a lab.

Komen “More Than Pink” Walk 2025!

Daniel Brown

The Susan G. Komen More Than Pink Walk in Pittsburgh was a great success! A sunny day with thousands of attendees. Thanks to all of the organizers and sponsors. Our team – the Magee-Hillman Breast Cancer Warriors was one of the top fundraisers. We were happy to see Natera sponsoring the event; Their booth was always busy! We spent most of the time at the Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC booth which was never quiet.

Patient-Derived Organoid Workshop hosted by Dr. Adrian Lee and the Institute for Precision Medicine

Daniel Brown

The Institute for Precision Medicine hosted the NCI-BCRF-Komen workshop on “Patient-Derived Breast Cancer Organoids: Challenges & Opportunities” on May 21-22, 2025 at The Assembly in Pittsburgh, PA.

The meeting was co-organized by myself, Sandra Demaria, Ariella Hanker, and Senthil Muthuswamy.

We brought together 45 investigators to discuss the state-of-the-art in PDO research and gaps that present barriers to progress.

The lively event raised several excellent points about how PDOs are credentialed and used in research. In particular, their use in predicting patient response to therapy (e.g., co-clinical trials) was a hotly discussed topic.

The National Institutes of Health recently promoted organoid models to reduce the reliance on animal models, and we hope that these novel alternative metholodologies will provide new avenues for precision medicine.

We thank The Breast Cancer Research Foundation and Susan G. Komen for sponsoring the workshop and advocates Bob Riter and Jamie LaScala who participated in a panel discussion on obtaining tissue for research.

Outcomes and deliverables of the workshop will be a white paper on best practices in breast cancer PDO research and hopefully a new network that can share PDO and data and accelerate this research.

If you are interested in participating in the Breast Organoid Working Group (BOWG) contact Dr. Adrian Lee.

Experts from the Institute for Precision Medicine spearhead groundbreaking discussions at the global PMWC 2025 conference

LeeOesterreich

At the PMWC conference, Adrian Lee, PhD, Director of the Institute for Precision Medicine (IPM), chaired the Clinical Utility of Liquid Biopsies track, leading a critical discussion on “Improving Sensitivity of MRD and MCED – Tumor-agnostic vs. Tumor-informed ctDNA Approaches.” Joining him on the panel was Marija Balic, MD, ScD, MBA, (UPMC Hillman Cancer Center) co-director of the Magee Women’s Cancer Program and clinical co-leader of the Women’s Cancer Research Center (WCRC). A leader in breast clinical science, she oversees Pitt and UPMC’s breast cancer program.

The Institute for Precision Medicine at PMWC 2025