Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide, with nearly 1.7 million new cases diagnosed in 2012. Fortunately, the availability of diagnosis tools to detect mammary neoplastic tissues, as well as transcriptomic biomarkers helping for prognosis, and the diversity of treatment options for primary tumors allows a 90% 5-year survival rate. However the metastatic grade of breast cancer is still not curable mainly due to chemo-resistance.
Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a key program involved in several steps of tumor development and progression, including tumor initiation, invasion, metastatic dissemination and therapeutic resistance [1][2][3]. The EMT reversion strategy, named mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition (MET) subsequently appears as a very seductive way to impair the metastasis potential of breast carcinoma as well as it chemo-resistance [4].
Based on preliminary results obtained from “SPICY” ERC Frontier Research Starting Grant, in which we successfully develop an assay dedicated to characterize the EMT state of breast carcinoma cells [EP2180042A1][5], MATADOR is an ERC proof-of-concept project which proposes a genuine innovative strategy to (1) develop marketable cell based assays allowing the discovery of new drugs promoting the MET process in breast carcinoma cells to (2) initiate drug discovery programs to efficiently slaughtering mammary tumors by targeting the whole population of cancer cells, and (3) create a CRO-type biotechnology company exploiting the pre-existing and newly created intellectual property: including marketable assays, therapeutics and drug cocktails defined in MATADOR. Patented services and compounds will ultimately be proposed to pharmaceutical companies to initiate pre-clinical developments.
