10/05/2020
GMI Fellow Wins Crile Research Fellowship Award
Takae Brewer, MD, cancer genomic medicine clinical fellow in the lab of Charis Eng, MD, PhD, received the Crile Research Fellowship Award for 2021-2022.
To encourage basic research training in the next generation of physicians, Cleveland Clinic established the Crile Research Fellowship Award for highly meritorious basic science research proposals. The award, given to up to four clinical trainees in their second year of postdoctoral training or above, provides recipients with a one-year basic research opportunity in addition to and outside of the medical training program at Cleveland Clinic.
Dr. Brewer’s winning research proposal, entitled “Defining Spatial Transcriptomic Signatures in Hereditary Breast Cancer,” will investigate for the first time the transcriptomic profiles of breast cancer associated with PTEN hamartoma tumor syndrome (PHTS) at single cell/cellular subset resolution in spatial relationships to one another.
PHTS is a hereditary cancer syndrome caused by germline mutations in the tumor suppressor gene PTEN that increases the lifetime risk of breast cancer up to 85%, compared to 12% in the U.S. general population.
Clinical data from the Eng lab indicates that breast cancer in individuals with PHTS behaves differently from its sporadic (not inherited) counterparts, which suggests that PHTS-associated breast cancer has characteristic genomic changes that drive cancer initiation and progression.
With this award, Dr. Brewer will examine gene expression patterns of PHTS-derived breast tumors and corresponding metastatic lesions in their original spatial position to provide further insight into the genomics of breast cancer development, invasion and metastasis in the context of PHTS.
Dr. Brewer has been an Ambrose Monell Cancer Genomic Medicine Clinical Fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Eng since 2018. In 2019, she entered the PRISM (Physician Researchers Innovating in Science and Medicine) program, a track offered by the Molecular Medicine PhD Program for Cleveland Clinic clinical residents/fellows in accredited training programs who wish to pursue a PhD in laboratory-based research.
Image: Takae Brewer, MD
