 |
Yvonne Myal, PhD 1989 PhD; 1983 MSc (Physiology) T: 204 789-3874| Lab: 789-3308 | F: 204 789-3931 |
|
Office: R202 Medical Rehabilitation Building, 771 McDermot Avenue Dr. Yvonne Myal received her BSC (Hons) in Biology at the University of Winnipeg and her MSc and PhD at the University of Manitoba under the supervision of Dr. Robert Shiu, a breast cancer researcher in the Department of Physiology where she developed many skills in Molecular Biology. Her postdoctoral training was in the Department of Physiology where she trained in novel techniques in blastocyst injections and generating transgenic and knockout mouse models of breast cancer. She then joined the Department of Pathology as a Principal Investigator and currently conducts a breast cancer research program, with a primary focus on breast cancer biomarkers. |
|
|
Research Interests: Dr. Myal's research program is focused on identifying novel molecular biomarkers of normal breast development as well as identifying breast cancer specific biomarkers and understanding the biological role of these markers in the progression of breast cancer from a localized disease to metastases. Research over the past few years has focused on two molecules: claudin 1 and the human prolactin inducible protein/gross cystic disease fluid protein (hPIP/GCDFP-15) gene. |
|
|
Research Program Despite great advances in breast cancer treatment, many women still fail standard therapies. Six to 10% of patients will have the cancer cells spreading to other organs, and 85% of deaths are a result of such cancer spread (metastasis). With the revelation of many more diverse breast cancer subtypes than first imagine, there is an urgency to find innovative strategies to manage this disease. My overall research program is focused on identifying novel biomarkers for breast cancer and the elucidation of their biological roles in this disease. One such biomarker is the prolactin inducible protein, PIP, also known as Gross Cystic Disease Fluid Protein GCDFP-15. Following its discovery as a highly abundant protein secreted by some breast cancer cell lines, PIP is now considered a valuable biomarker for abnormal breast and breast cancer, and is frequently used in the clinic by pathologists to confirm whether metastatic carcinoma originating from an unknown primary site is of mammary origin. We have now generated various mouse models to address the function of PIP in vivo, including the first two transgenic mouse models for the PIP/GCDFP-15 gene, (Myal Y et al., 1998 Transgenic.2:327; Myal Y et al. 1998. J Mol. Endocrinolog. 21:217 Immunol. 45:1082) and a PIP knockout mouse model (Blanchard et al, 2009) and most recently, developed the first CRISPR/Cas9 PIP knockout mouse model through our Central Animal Core facility. Using our animal models, we discovered that PIP induces protective immune responses to control the primary tumor growth but paradoxically promotes and enhances cancer spread in the lungs, a primary metastatic site for breast cancer. Our studies therefore suggest that PIP plays critical roles in early as well as late stage breast cancer. Our group is currently delineating how PIP is able to exert such diverse functions at different stages of this disease. This work is novel and innovative and has the potential to guide new therapeutic strategies that would protect the patient from breast cancer progression and spread, thereby greatly influencing patient care. Claudin 1 is another protein of interest that we study in our lab. It is a tight junction protein which we first identified to be highly expressed in a subset of estrogen receptor negative breast cancers (Blanchard A et al., 2009 Virchows Arch. 454:647). Importantly, we demonstrated that the expression of claudin 1 is significantly associated with the basal-like subtype of breast cancer and patient age and thus may be potentially a useful biomarker for diagnosing this particular subtype of breast cancer. Selected Honors and Awards:
Selected Publications:
|
|
| Publications:Pubmed | |
|
Laboratory Members:Students:
|
|
