Department member Dr. Kathleen Montone was part of a Basser-Center-supported study on triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) that was published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology this week. The paper identifies a long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) that regulates repair of DNA breaks in TNBC, an aggressive subtype of breast cancer with poor clinical outcome. Using a clinically guided genetic screening approach, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have now identified LINP1, a lncRNA, that is overexpressed in triple-negative breast cancer cells and regulated by the tumor suppressor p53 and the activated cell surface protein, EGFR. LINP1 enhances the repair of DNA breaks by serving as a scaffold that links two other proteins in the repair machinery.
Read the Department of Communications news release.