Christos Sotiriou, MD, PhD

2009-2010 BCRF Project:
Dr. Sotiriou's ongoing project raises the question of whether hereditary variations in genes (germline polymorphisms) contribute to breast cancer metastasis. To this end, a total of 150 women with or without circulating tumor cells before and after the administration of adjuvant chemotherapy were analyzed. A preliminary analysis identified 52 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) being significantly associated with relapse. The SNPs involve genes implicated in promoting immune suppression, tumor angiogenesis, tumor cell migration, and invasion in many cancers, including carcinoma of the breast. It has been estimated that around 30% of women with early breast cancer will experience a recurrence or relapse despite having received therapies after surgery such as chemotherapy or hormonal therapy (adjuvant therapies).

It has been shown that examining only the standard characteristics of a tumor under a microscope does not correctly identify patients likely to relapse. Examining the genes of a tumor through a technique called gene expression profiling and studying tumor cells circulating in blood (CTCs) and tumor cells in bone marrow (DTCs) now provide us with new tools that are likely to help improve our ability to predict which patients have a disease that is likely to come back and which patients are likely to do well. Furthermore, these tools are currently studied for their ability to predict which particular therapy works best for each individual woman. However, with currently available technology, these CTCs are only rarely found in the blood of women with early breast cancer and they are viable only for few hours after the blood draw. These limitations hamper the potential detection and characterization of these cells as a real time monitoring tool to predict patient outcome.

Over the last decade, a new class of molecules called microRNAs, have been found to regulate protein synthesis in human cells. These microRNAs have been shown to be extremely stable in human plasma and have been recently studied as a way to detect earlier several cancers like lung, ovarian or prostate cancer. The aim of Dr. Sotiriou's new project is to identify plasma circulating microRNAs that are specific for breast cancer and could be used as an additional tool to help predict which patients have a disease that is likely to come back and which particular therapy works best for each individual woman with breast cancer.

Bio:
Dr. Christos Sotiriou earned a medical degree from the Universit� Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, in 1993. He did his internal medicine/oncology residency at the Jules Bordet Institute (Profs. J. Klastersky, M. Piccart), and he earned his specialty in internal medicine and medical oncology in July 1999 at the Universit� Libre de Bruxelles. During his last year of residency, he worked as research fellow at the Laboratory of Endocrinology, Bone Metabolism and Breast Oncology (Dr J. Body), at the Jules Bordet Institute, supported by an educational grant from the Belgian National Foundation of Scientific Research.

From October 1999 till September 2001, he worked as basic research fellow, at the Division of Clinical Sciences, Microarray Facility, National Cancer Institute (Pr Edison Liu), National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA, supported by an educational grant from the Association "Yvonne et Thomas Rucquois - Les Amis de l'Institut Jules Bordet - Belgium", and the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA. During his fellowship he received a Scholar in Training Award for the study of the expression profiling analysis of von Hippel-Lindau tumor suppressor gene from the American Association for Cancer Research, March 24-28, 2001, New Orleans, USA. Since October 2001, he has been Assistant Professor at the Medical Oncology Clinic of the Jules Bordet Institute.

Dr. Sotiriou earned his doctor of philosophy degree (PhD) from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium in September 2004. He was promoted Head of the Functional Genomics and Translational Research Unit of the Jules Bordet Institute in October 2004 and, in October 2005 he will become a research associate at the Belgian National Foundation of Scientific Research (FNRS). Dr. Sotiriou's research focuses on genomics and molecular biology in breast cancer.

Dr. Sotiriou is a member of ASCO, AACR, and ESMO and also member of the Steering and Executive committee of TRANSBIG, a "sister" network of the Breast International Group (BIG aisbl), dedicated multinational translational research linked to prospective clinical trials, since 2003. He presently has several publications in peer review journals and three book chapters. He is also a reviewer for several scientific journals. He received several educational and research grants from the Swiss Foundation MEDIC, the National Foundation of Cancer Research, the Université Libre de Bruxelles, the "Fonds Jean-Claude Heuson", the Fondation Lambeau-Marteau, the Belgian Federation against Cancer, and the European Union Framework VI Programme.