Breast cancer affects 13,500 Australian women annually, and despite gains of past decades, remains an intractable disease. Bold new approaches are required for women for whom available treatments currently offer little hope.

The NRBC (Nuclear Receptors in Breast Cancer) project is focussed on signalling pathways of nuclear receptors, which are master regulators of virtually every aspect of life. Although many nuclear receptors are expressed in breast cancers, their significance in breast cancer management has received little attention to date. The objectives of this discovery research program are

to identify the nuclear receptor networks active in breast cancers that will serve as new targets for treatment and

to translate this knowledge into new treatments for groups of women currently with few treatment options.

This research program is an Australia-wide collaboration between the:

Westmead Institute for Cancer Research, Westmead Millenium Institute

Dame Roma Mitchell Cancer Research Laboratories, Hanson Institute

Institute for Molecular Bioscience

Queensland Facility for Advanced Bioinformatics

Western Australian Institute of Medical Research

Prince Henry’s Institute for Medical Research

Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute

It brings together established research groups from renowned research Institutes and with currently non-overlapping, internationally recognised programs of research in nuclear receptor biology. The Chief Investigators are drawn from virtually every state in Australia and contribute complementary expertise in basic hormone research, bioinformatics, high throughput analyses, human tissue research, animal models, and clinical endocrinology.

The NRBC project has been funded by a National Collaborative Research Program Grant from National Breast Cancer Foundation.