Geneviève Deblois and her team are studying the development of drug resistance in breast cancer, particularly in triple-negative breast cancer.

Research theme

Triple-negative breast cancer has aggressive and heterogeneous tumor characteristics, creating considerable challenges in its treatment and leading to a poor prognosis. Despite an initial positive response to chemotherapy, these cancers have high relapse rates associated with resistance to chemotherapeutic treatments.

Cells with the capacity to survive chemotherapy treatments display important epigenetic reprogramming and metabolic changes that contribute to their survival and proliferation despite exposure to treatment.

Research objectives

Geneviève Deblois’ team seeks to understand how the microenvironment and metabolism of cancer cells contribute to modulating the accessibility and use of specific regions of the genome through epigenetic modifications. These modifications can activate or repress gene expression, without altering the gene sequence. Her research group aims to understand how this reciprocal regulation between metabolism and epigenetic modifications contributes to cancer progression.

The aim of this work is to identify and characterize metabolic and epigenetic reprogramming in breast cancer cells, with a view to preventing the emergence of chemotherapy resistance.