Michael Wigler, PhD
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory,
Cold Spring Harbor, NY

Dr. Wigler's laboratory has developed a new parameter to assess the malignancy of breast cancers. Based on genomic profiling and technology developed under the auspices of The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, the method should assist in evaluating which patients should be treated with which therapies. The researchers increased the resolving power of their gene profiling method that will accelerate the discovery of breast cancer genes, and made improvements that will lower its cost, bringing it closer to routine use in a clinical setting. In the past year, they systematically applied ROMA (a technology they developed) to the analysis of human breast cancer, and steadily worked at improving resolution, applicability in different clinical settings, and developing extensive algorithmic tools for data interpretation. Their results indicate that they can achieve improved prediction of the clinical outcome of breast cancer by genomic profiling, and predict which therapies will be most effective in which patients. Additionally, mutations causing the disease can be identified. In particular, they may be able to identify changes in the genome that distinguish malignant from benign disease at its earliest point of detection.