An important focus of our research is to studying proteins that are able to bind carcinogenic environmental pollutants, and to determine how these proteins (namely the dioxin receptor) impact on breast cancer progression. This dioxin receptor (AhR) is an important regulator of gene activity (i.e. it controls whether or not, and to what level a particular gene is expressed in cells).  Thus, AhR is able to induce the production of molecules that can detoxify cells from these pollutants, but importantly one of these proteins can also transform estrogen into a byproduct that causes mutations in genes that are within the breast epithelium. Our long-term goal is to ultimately understand how these important molecules function together and cooperate in either promoting or preventing breast cancer.

This study is funded by the Environment-Cancer Fund^TM. Thank you to Read for the Cure for their financial contribution to this project.