The Breast Cancer Research Foundation of Alabama (BCRFA) has announced funding for two pre-R01 grants for the 2025 fall cycle of the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center’s O’Neal Invests program. Sooryanarayana Varambally, Ph.D., MBA, a professor in the Department of Pathology's Division of Molecular and Cellular Pathology is a pre-R01 recipient for his project titled, "Evaluation of ATPase TRIP13 as biomarker in breast cancers and investigation of its functions." 

Breast cancer is a leading cause of mortality for women worldwide. To understand how breast cancer develops, Varambally employed bioinformatic analysis to identify biomarkers for breast cancers. He focused specifically on triple-negative breast cancers, which are an aggressive and heterogenous set of tumors with a limited number of targetable genomic aberrations. The team did so using UALCAN and MammOnc-DB, two platforms Varambally developed with the support of BCRFA funding for comprehensive analysis of cancer proteogenomic and epigenetic big data.

"In breast cancer, we identified TRIP13, an AAA ATPase enzyme, as a potential driver gene that can be targeted with the small molecule inhibitor DCZ0415," Varambally said. "Our analysis found that about 35% of metastatic breast cancers showed more TRIP13 gene copies compared to normal breast cells, suggesting that it is a cancer-causing gene."

Varambally plans to test his hypothesis that TRIP13 is a driver oncogene that promotes breast cancer initiation and progression in his upcoming project.

The O’Neal Invests program at the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB seeks to promote excellence in the areas of basic, population and translational science research relevant to cancer. The program supports nascent, paradigm-shifting cancer research proposed by UAB faculty. These are novel ideas with considerable promise and potential impact in the field of cancer care; they are likely to lead to extramural funding, as determined by a peer-reviewed panel of experts. Pre-R01 grants are for $160,000 distributed over two years.