The Thumbay Research Institute for Precision Medicine at Gulf Medical University (GMU) hosted an insightful scientific lecture titled “Drivers of Triple-Negative Breast Cancer: Molecular Role of FOXC1 in TNBC,” delivered by Dr. Revathy Ramachandran, Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology at Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences as part of the Research Seminar Series.
The lecture highlighted the latest discoveries from her recent publication in iScience, “Conserved role of FOXC1 in TNBC is parallel to FOXA1 in ER+ breast cancer.” Her work provides an in-depth molecular understanding of FOXC1, a transcription factor highly expressed in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and strongly associated with its aggressive behavior.
Dr. Revathy presented a comprehensive multi-dimensional analysis of FOXC1 using CRISPR gene editing, RNA sequencing, ChIP-seq, proteomics, and bioinformatics. Her team identified FOXC1 as a central regulator of key cancer traits, including proliferation, migration, invasion, stemness, and clonogenic potential. A significant portion of the lecture focused on the discovery of conserved FOXC1-regulated genes, including 38 direct targets and 164 broader genes essential to TNBC progression. These targets included both oncogenes activated by FOXC1 and tumor suppressors that are repressed by it, with their expression patterns showing strong correlation with clinical outcomes.
Further, Dr. Revathy described the discovery of a novel interaction between FOXC1 and the nuclear receptor NR2F2, revealed through proteomic analysis, which opens potential new therapeutic avenues. She also discussed how FOXC1 mirrors the function of FOXA1 in estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer by occupying similar genomic regions, effectively acting as a parallel transcriptional driver in TNBC.
In closing, she emphasized the importance of FOXC1-regulated pathways as potential therapeutic targets and shared future plans to expand this research into patient-derived samples using single-cell genomic approaches to better understand TNBC heterogeneity.
Aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):
SDG 4: Quality Education; SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
