The Burroughs Wellcome Fund is an independent private foundation established to advance medical sciences. Slingerland's award will allow her to study breast cancer and the problem of resistance to hormonal drugs like Tamoxifen. Approximately four million women worldwide are being treated for breast cancer with Tamoxifen but most of these cancers eventually develop resistance to the drug, says Slingerland. Her studies are aimed at further identifying how Tamoxifen works and how breast cancer cells react to the drug. Her study will identify how cellular growth pathways are turned on when estrogen stimulates breast cancer cells, and how Tamoxifen shuts them off.
Tamoxifen is a drug used to oppose estrogen's ability to stimulate growth of breast cancer cells.
Slingerland will study a molecule called p27 which helps to slow down cell growth. She will test whether estrogen turns off p27 in breast cancers which may enable the cancer to continue growing. She will also study whether Tamoxifen increases the amount of p27, blocking the growth of cancer cells, and what occurs at a cellular level when cancer cells change from being sensitive to Tamoxifen to acquiring resistance to the drug. Applicants across North America submitted grants on topics as diverse as the molecular biology of asthma, new forms of infection, neurologic diseases and cancer. Each university was allowed to submit only two applicants.