Department of Biomedical Engineering

Dr. Kelley Madden Receives Department of Defense IDEA Award

Dr. Kelley Madden has received funding from the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program for a 2-year study that seeks to understand how an important stress pathway, the sympathetic nervous system, influences breast tumor growth and metastasis. Specifically, this study will determine if the sympathetic nervous system encourages growth of blood vessels into a tumor (angiogenesis). A unique aspect of this project is to determine if the sympathetic nervous system alters the effectiveness of therapy targeting and destroying tumor blood vessels (antiangiogenic therapy). Understanding how a stress pathway influences tumor growth will open the door to therapeutic options targeting the sympathetic nervous system. Importantly, therapies targeting sympathetic nervous system signaling pathways are already in use in the clinic for safe, chronic treatment of heart disease, offering the possibility of rapid clinical application of our findings. This project continues work that has been previously funded by the Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester.