Birmingham Researchers Visit Parliament to Raise Breast Cancer Awareness

In October Dr Paloma Garcia and Dr Rachel Bayley from the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences were invited to UK Parliament to take part in the Breast Cancer Awareness Day, "Wear It Pink", as breast cancer researcher's representative of the Midlands.

Dr Paloma Garcia shares more about their experience: "We had the opportunity to explain our research funded by the Breast Cancer Now charity to MPs and other members of the public. It was great to communicate the importance of research, to answer their questions and to learn their personal stories, including the fact that some of the MPs attending were breast cancer survivors themselves. We even had the opportunity to test their knowledge of breast cancer via interactive games themed around breast cancer stem cells and images of our research."

"Our research wants to understand more about how a protein called MYBL2 works in breast cancer stem cells. Breast tumours with high levels of MYBL2 can be more aggressive and can grow more rapidly, but we don’t yet know the exact role of this protein. We are altering the levels of MYBL2 in breast cancer cells grown in the lab and a mouse model of human breast cancer, to see if this affects how breast cancer stem cells work. To see whether MYBL2 could be a potential target for treatments, we are testing whether lowering the levels of this protein, and then treating cancer cells with additional drugs, could stop breast cancer stem cells growing."

For more information visit the Breast Cancer Now website.