Our ability to treat and ultimately cure cancer necessarily involves the identification of biochemical and genetic factors that control long-term survival in individuals with the disease. These factors are termed prognostic factors, in that they can be used to determine the probability of long-term survival in individual patients. My laboratory was the first to discover that eEF1A2, a gene highly expressed in 30-50% of breast and ovarian tumours, is a prognostic factor for these cancers. We determined that patients with eEF1A2 expression in their tumour have a better chance of long-term survival than those whose tumour does not have eEF1A2. The goal of this proposal is to determine how eEF1A2 regulates breast cancer outcome  We hypothesize that eEF1A2 may regulate metastatic development or control breast cancer stem cells. The goal of this project is to test these ideas in several mouse models of breast cancer. This study will have an impact on our understanding of the factors regulating breast cancer survival.