Presentation description

Identifying new treatments for breast cancer is critical because approximately 13% of American women will be diagnosed with it in their lifetime, and around 2.5% will die from it, mostly due to metastasis to other body parts such as the lungs, liver, brain, and bone. Reducing metastasis would significantly decrease mortality. Mice are ideal models due to their short reproduction cycles and rapid result analysis. This project examines breast cancer tumor metastasis in mouse models, focusing on an isoform of Ron kinase called short-form Ron (sf-Ron). In mouse models, knocking out sf-Ron or using Ron inhibitors has been shown to reduce tumor metastasis. This study investigates the effects of ZB-60, a sf- Ron inhibitor, on lung metastasis in mice. We hypothesize that ZB-60 treatment will significantly reduce tumor growth. To explore the effect of ZB-60, mice started treatment with ZB-60, BMS-777607 (positive control), and vehicle three days before receiving PyMT tumor cells via their tail veins. Lung tissues were harvested 28 days after tumor injection. We employed immunohistochemistry (IHC) to stain tumor cells, using antibodies to PyMT and EpCAM. After staining, we photographed the slides and analyzed them for tumors using QuPath software. The results showed that mice with sf-Ron knocked out or inhibited exhibited significantly less tumor growth and progression compared to control mice. Future analyses are ongoing, but ZB-60 doesn't seem like a promising therapeutic approach for reducing tumor growth and metastasis in humans.