Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) tends to be highly aggressive, and almost 50% of patients develop distant metastasis to the brain, liver, and/or lung, at which point the median survival time is only 8-13 months. Although the addition of immunotherapy to neoadjuvant chemotherapy has improved the survival of patients, cancer recurrence & metastasis remains a key unmet need. There is an urgent need to develop new therapy regimens and targets.
Epigenetic therapeutics is an emerging arena for overcoming immunotherapy resistance. Epigenetic Enzymes, Erasers and Writers, are moving toward the forefront of drug development for a plethora of diseases due to the plasticity and reversible nature of epi-therapeutics. Importantly, the combinatorial epigenetic codes or signatures laid down by these enzymes within the highly modifiable amino-terminal tails of histones eloquently regulates gene expression programs. Recent exciting findings show that these codes extend to non-histone proteins critical for protein stability of critical cellular factors. My laboratory has been at the forefront of developing epi-based therapeutics. In this seminar, I will present the current state of play in my laboratory towards clinical advancement novel classes of ep-therapeutics as mono or as IO combination approaches & parallel liquid patient stratification signatures harnessing AI/machine learning approaches towards personalised medicine in close partnership with clinicians and global technology partnerships.