Joe Jerry is a molecular biologist in the Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He laments that in the 10 or so years since researchers identified two breast cancer tumor suppressors, BRCA1 and BRCA2, the research tools have gotten more sophisticated and the scientists more skilled but no BRCA3 or BRCA4 has been identified. Instead, he says, further discoveries in breast cancer genetics may depend on a completely different class of genes.

Jerry explains that everyone carries BRCA1 but a small number of people have a variant that damages its tumor suppressing function. Those people are very likely to get breast cancer. What his lab is looking at behaves differently.

'We've identified a chromosomal region that suppresses mammary tumors in mice, called SuprMam1,' he says. Like BRCA1, SuprMam1 has certain variants that are associated with increased risk of tumors. However, unlike the increased risk with BRCA1, the SuprMam1 variants appear to contribute only a small increase in breast cancer risk, though they may be much more common.

Jerry emphasizes that his work is theoretical and the data set is small. But it's promising enough to begin translating the study from mice to people. For that, Jerry turned to his collaborators at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield. UMass and Baystate conduct joint research through the Pioneer Valley Life Sciences Institute, which has a breast cancer working group that Jerry directs.

Christopher Otis is a member of that group. He's also director of surgical pathology at Baystate and an associate professor of pathology at Tufts University School of Medicine.

'This is an indication of where we are going in medical research,' he says of his collaboration with Jerry. 'The war on cancer is continuing but now we're recognizing that we have to be able to make quick use of all this information in a human setting.' Jerry's work relies on doctors like Otis, who work regularly with actual patients, and Otis and other clinicians rely on teams like Jerry's to conduct the basic science.

Currently, Otis is conducting what he describes as a small pilot study to look at SuprMam. The study uses tissue from human breasts that has been sampled for diagnostic purposes but is not needed for patient care. Baystate's Institutional Review Board has approved the study, which also complies with federal patient privacy regulations. None of the researchers or anyone involved in the study knows anything about the women whose breast tissue is sampled. The patients do sign a surgical consent form, though, which indicates that tissue not needed for their care may become part of medical research. While the sample size is too small to extrapolate to the broader population, Otis says, preliminary results are promising.

'So far it looks like it's answering the questions in the way that we would have expected,' Otis says of the study.

Jerry is hopeful his research will lead to a better understanding of why some women don't get breast cancer. That would help researchers and doctors develop preventive therapies that might work in high-risk patients. For example, he says, research shows that women who carry a pregnancy to full term when they are 18 to 20 years old show a lower risk of getting breast cancer. While he notes that he's not advocating teen pregnancy, he recognizes in that data the fact that something about the body's experience during pregnancy early in life impacts breast cancer risk and he'd like to figure out what that is. Studying prevention, he says, is challenging but also promising.

'It's a lot easier to close the door,' he says, 'than to chase the horse down after he's left the barn.'

Jerry says he studied lactation in livestock years ago and his research could have gone in any number of directions. Breast cancer turned out to be the puzzle whose mysteries he could get funding to explore. The National Institutes of Health and the Defense Department are the two major funding sources for breast cancer research, he says. But he's more than pragmatic about the research path he's on.

'You want it to be something that you feel,' he pauses, 'that's meaningful.' He doesn't have a personal connection to breast cancer - he says that could impede his objectivity - but he notes that as he gets older he knows more and more women who've had it. So in addition to enjoying the scientific curiosity and challenge his genetic work on breast cancer presents, he hopes his results can ultimately help people.

'We have a real opportunity to make progress,' he says.