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AACR presents outstanding investigator award for breast cancer research
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SAN ANTONIO — Mohamed Bentires-Alj, Pharm. PhD, received the eighth annual American Association for Cancer Research Outstanding Investigator Award for Breast Cancer Research.
Bentires-Alj, senior staff scientist at Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland, presented his award lecture titled “Breast tumor heterogeneity: Act locally, think globally” on Dec. 11 at San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
The award recognizes an investigator aged 50 years or younger whose work has had or may have far-reaching impact on the detection, diagnosis, treatment, etiology or prevention of breast cancer.
The AACR selected Bentires-Alj for his work on normal and neoplastic breast cell plasticity, which found that mutant PI3 kinase induces multipotency and multi-lineage mammary tumors, and that Src homology 2 domain-containing protein tyrosine phosphatase 2 (SHP2) promotes breast cancer progression and maintains tumor-initiating cells.
Bentires-Alj’s research has shown that co-targeting PI3 kinase/mTOR and JAK2 in triple-negative breast cancer models increases OS while decreasing tumor volume, seeding and metastasis. His work also established that discontinuation of CCL2 inhibition promotes angiogenesis, thereby accelerating breast cancer metastasis.