Valerie Speirs

Last updated
Valerie Speirs

FRCPath
Alma mater University of Aberdeen (BSc)
University of Glasgow (PhD)
Scientific career
Fields Cancer biology
Breast cancer
Molecular pathology [1]
Institutions University of Aberdeen
University of Leeds
University of Liverpool
University of Hull
The Hospital for Sick Children
Thesis The role of fibroblasts in the differentiation of human non-small cell lung carcinoma  (1989)
Doctoral advisor Ian Freshney [2]
Website www.abdn.ac.uk/ims/research/cell-cancer-biology/profiles/valerie.speirs

Valerie Speirs FRCPath is a Professor of Molecular Oncology at the University of Aberdeen. [1] Her research aims to identify biomarkers of breast cancer to inform diagnosis and treatment. [3] [4]

Contents

Education

Speirs studied zoology at the University of Aberdeen. [5] She completed her graduate studies at the University of Glasgow. [6] [5] She worked with Ian Freshney on cell culture and became interested in how cell culture systems can be used to model disease. [2]

Career and research

Speirs research investigates Cancer biology, Breast cancer and Molecular pathology. [1] [3] [4]

Speirs joined The Hospital for Sick Children.[ when? ] Speirs worked at the University of Hull on the expression of oestrogen receptor mRNA. [7] [8] She looked at the role of the CGA gene in endocrine response. [9]

Speirs was a member of the Breast Cancer Campaign Scientific Advisory Board in 2008. [10] She joined the Irish Health Research Board in 2009. [10] She served as principal investigator of the Leeds Breast Cancer Campaign Tissue Bank. [5] She oversaw the launch of the tissue bank with the cancer research community in 2012. [5] The tissue bank was a founding member of the Breast Cancer Now tissue bank. [11]

Speirs joined the University of Leeds in 2012. Since then she has been a member of the Sloane Project steering group, a five year study of 1,000 women. [12] As lead of the St James's University Hospital Institute of Cancer & Pathology, Speirs looked to transfer lab-based molecular pathology techniques into the clinic for the identification of breast carcinoma in men and women. [13] She serves on the advisory group of the National Cancer Research Institute biomarkers advisory group. [10] She studies oestrogen receptor biology and endocrine resistant breast cancer. [14] She has looked to identify the biomarkers for male breast cancer, finding that the androgen receptor biomarker had prognostic significance. [15] She found that male breast cancers over-express eukaryotic initiation factors. [16] She developed a series of resources to educate nurses in observing breast cancer. [17]

In 2016 Speirs launched the virtual resource Sharing Experimental Animal Resources: Coordinating Holdings in Breast Cancer (SEARCHBreast), a platform to share materials that are surplus to animal studies of breast cancer. [18] [19] [20] The project was part of a NC3R grant to develop smart approaches to reduce animal use in science. [21] The resources are available for the characterisation of tumour biomarkers and to investigate the effect of treatment. [22] In 2018 Speirs joined the University of Aberdeen. She holds a visiting lectureship at the University of Leeds. She is a member of the Cellular Molecular Pathology initiative of National Cancer Research Institute. [18] [11] She is working with James Boyne at the University of Bradford on miRNA using blood and breast cancer tissues from the Breast Cancer Tissue Bank. [23] They will investigate how endocrine disrupting agents modulate the activity of fibroblasts in high and low mammographic density breast tissue. [24] They use a 3D in vitro model of the human mammary gland. [24] By identifying how oestrogen mimics effect human fibroblasts from areas of different breast density it will be possible to identify how the drives breast cancer development. [24] She has published extensively on breast cancer and has a h-index of over 40. [25] She is associate editor for BMC Cancer .[ citation needed ]

Awards and honours

Speirs was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists (FRCPath) in 2007. [5]

Related Research Articles

Immunohistochemistry Common application of immunostaining

Immunohistochemistry (IHC) is the most common application of immunostaining. It involves the process of selectively identifying antigens (proteins) in cells of a tissue section by exploiting the principle of antibodies binding specifically to antigens in biological tissues. IHC takes its name from the roots "immuno", in reference to antibodies used in the procedure, and "histo", meaning tissue. Albert Coons conceptualized and first implemented the procedure in 1941.

Tamoxifen medication

Tamoxifen, sold under the brand name Nolvadex among others, is a selective estrogen receptor modulator used to prevent breast cancer in women and treat breast cancer in women and men. It is also being studied for other types of cancer. It has been used for Albright syndrome. Tamoxifen is typically taken daily by mouth for five years for breast cancer.

Intracrine

Intracrine refers to a hormone that acts inside a cell, regulating intracellular events. In simple terms it means that the cell stimulates itself by cellular production of a factor that acts within the cell. Steroid hormones act through intracellular receptors and, thus, may be considered to be intracrines. In contrast, peptide or protein hormones, in general, act as endocrines, autocrines, or paracrines by binding to their receptors present on the cell surface. Several peptide/protein hormones or their isoforms also act inside the cell through different mechanisms. These peptide/protein hormones, which have intracellular functions, are also called intracrines. The term 'intracrine' is thought to have been coined to represent peptide/protein hormones that also have intracellular actions. To better understand intracrine, we can compare it to paracrine, autocrine and endocrine. The autocrine system deals with the autocrine receptors of a cell allowing for the hormones to bind, which have been secreted from that same cell. The paracrine system is one where nearby cells get hormones from a cell, and change the functioning of those nearby cells. The endocrine system refers to when the hormones from a cell affect another cell that is very distant from the one that released the hormone.

The prolactin receptor (PRLR) is a type I cytokine receptor encoded in humans by the PRLR gene on chromosome 5p13-14. It is the receptor for prolactin (PRL). The PRLR can also bind to and be activated by growth hormone (GH) and human placental lactogen (hPL). The PRLR is expressed in the mammary glands, pituitary gland, and other tissues. It plays an important role in lobuloalveolar development of the mammary glands during pregnancy and in lactation.

Marc Guy Albert Marie Lacroix is a biochemist and a researcher who specializes in breast cancer biology, metastasis and therapy.

Fibroblast growth factor receptor 1

Fibroblast growth factor receptor 1 (FGFR1), also known as basic fibroblast growth factor receptor 1, fms-related tyrosine kinase-2 / Pfeiffer syndrome, and CD331, is a receptor tyrosine kinase whose ligands are specific members of the fibroblast growth factor family. FGFR1 has been shown to be associated with Pfeiffer syndrome.

Hormonal therapy in oncology is hormone therapy for cancer and is one of the major modalities of medical oncology, others being cytotoxic chemotherapy and targeted therapy (biotherapeutics). It involves the manipulation of the endocrine system through exogenous or external administration of specific hormones, particularly steroid hormones, or drugs which inhibit the production or activity of such hormones. Because steroid hormones are powerful drivers of gene expression in certain cancer cells, changing the levels or activity of certain hormones can cause certain cancers to cease growing, or even undergo cell death. Surgical removal of endocrine organs, such as orchiectomy and oophorectomy can also be employed as a form of hormonal therapy.

Medullary breast carcinoma Rare type of breast cancer

Medullary breast carcinoma is a rare type of breast cancer that is characterized as a relatively circumscribed tumor with pushing, rather than infiltrating, margins. It is histologically characterized as poorly differentiated cells with abundant cytoplasm and pleomorphic high grade vesicular nuclei. It involves lymphocytic infiltration in and around the tumor and can appear to be brown in appearance with necrosis and hemorrhage. Prognosis is measured through staging but can often be treated successfully and has a better prognosis than other infiltrating breast carcinomas.

The estrogen receptor test (ERT) uses the estrogen receptor (ER) tumor marker that allows for immunohistochemical techniques to be performed for diagnostic purposes. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) techniques involve the selective identification of antigen proteins by exploiting these antigen-antibody relationships to characterize your analyte of interest. Previously, the ligand binding assay has been used in the determination of ER activity, however this method was limited because of the requirement of large quantities of fresh tissue needed for each assay. IHC serves as a more efficient methods as this technique allows for the morphology of the tissue to be observed in a tumor-specific manner. This increases the practicability of this technique as in many cases, patients’ tissue samples are limited in the applications of biomarker analysis. Anti-estrogen receptor antibodies were among the first of biomarkers which introduced a semi-quantitative assessment of the ER activity. Today, ER analysis is one of many routinely performed immunohistochemical assays performed to classify the hormone receptor status and to serve as a means of insight in the determination of cancer prognosis and management.

Metastatic breast cancer Type of cancer

Metastatic breast cancer, also referred to as metastases, advanced breast cancer, secondary tumors, secondaries or stage IV breast cancer, is a stage of breast cancer where the breast cancer cells have spread to distant sites beyond the axillary lymph nodes. There is no cure for metastatic breast cancer; There is no stage after IV.

DirectHit is a pharmacodiagnostic test used to determine the tumor sensitivity or resistance to drug regimens recommended for the treatment of breast cancer by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. It is a noninvasive test performed on small amounts of tissue removed during the original surgery lumpectomy, mastectomy, or core biopsy. DirectHit was developed by CCC Diagnostics Inc., a biotechnology company established by former researchers from Johns Hopkins University. DirectHit was launched on 14 January 2010. Currently, it is the only available test for predicting treatment outcomes for anticancer chemotherapy drugs for breast cancer.

Cancer biomarker Substance or process that is indicative of the presence of cancer in the body

A cancer biomarker refers to a substance or process that is indicative of the presence of cancer in the body. A biomarker may be a molecule secreted by a tumor or a specific response of the body to the presence of cancer. Genetic, epigenetic, proteomic, glycomic, and imaging biomarkers can be used for cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and epidemiology. Ideally, such biomarkers can be assayed in non-invasively collected biofluids like blood or serum.

Palbociclib Medication for HR+ HER2− breast cancer

Palbociclib, sold under the brand name Ibrance among others, is a medication developed by Pfizer for the treatment of HR-positive and HER2-negative breast cancer. It is a selective inhibitor of the cyclin-dependent kinases CDK4 and CDK6. Palbociclib was the first CDK4/6 inhibitor to be approved as a cancer therapy.

E-SCREEN is a cell proliferation assay based on the enhanced proliferation of human breast cancer cells (MCF-7) in the presence of estrogen active substances. The E-SCREEN test is a tool to easily and rapidly assess estrogenic activity of suspected xenoestrogens. This bioassay measures estrogen-induced increase of the number of human breast cancer cell, which is biologically equivalent to the increase of mitotic activity in tissues of the genital tract. It was originally developed by Soto et al and was included in the first version of the OECD Conceptual Framework for Testing and Assessment of Endocrine Disrupters published in 2012. However, due to failed validation, it was not included in the updated version of the framework published in 2018.

John Albert Katzenellenbogen is an American Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He studies the development of novel agents for the treatment of hormone-responsive and non-responsive breast and prostate cancers and the design of estrogens and antiestrogens that have a favorable balance of beneficial versus detrimental effects.

Benita S. Katzenellenbogen née Schulman is an American physiologist and cell biologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has studied cancer, endocrinology, and women's health, focusing on nuclear receptors. She also dedicated efforts to focusing on improving the effectiveness of endocrine therapies in breast cancer.

Thea D. Tlsty is an American pathologist and professor of pathology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She is known for her research in cancer biology and her involvement in the discovery of cells that may be at the origin of metaplastic cancer, an invasive form of breast cancer.

Professor Jason Carroll is a British medical researcher serving as a Senior Group Leader at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, University of Cambridge and Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Azeria Therapeutics. He is a Professor of Molecular Oncology assigned to the Department of Oncology and a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge.

SRARP

Steroid Receptor Associated and Regulated Protein (SRARP) in humans is a protein encoded by a gene of the same name with two exons that is located on chromosome 1p36.13. SRARP contains 169 amino acids and has a molecular weight of 17,657 Da.

Endocrine therapy is a common treatment for estrogen receptor positive breast cancer. However, resistance to this therapy can develop, leading to relapse and progression of disease. This highlights the need for new strategies to combat this resistance.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Valerie Speirs publications indexed by Google Scholar OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  2. 1 2 "Choosing the right cell line for your research". www.phe-culturecollections.org.uk. Retrieved 2018-11-05.
  3. 1 2 Valerie Speirs publications from Europe PubMed Central
  4. 1 2 Valerie Speirs publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Eleogui, Stella. "Valerie Speirs". medhealth.leeds.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-11-05.
  6. ↑ Speirs, Valerie (1989). The role of fibroblasts in the differentiation of human non-small cell lung carcinoma (PhD thesis). University of Glasgow. OCLC   181830156. Copac   7975917.
  7. ↑ Knight, C. H.; Peaker, M.; Wilde, C. J. (2012). Intercellular Signalling in the Mammary Gland. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN   9781461519737.
  8. ↑ Speirs, Valerie; Boyle‐Walsh, Eilis; Fraser, William D. (1997). "Constitutive co‐expression of estrogen and progesterone receptor mRNA in human meningiomas by RT‐PCR and response of in vitro cell cultures to steroid hormone". International Journal of Cancer. 72 (5): 714–719. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1097-0215(19970904)72:5<714::AID-IJC2>3.0.CO;2-V. ISSN   1097-0215. PMID   9311583.
  9. ↑ Speirs, Valerie (2001). "Endocrine response: Is CGAthe key?". Breast Cancer Research. 3 (1). doi: 10.1186/bcr-2001-68452 . ISSN   1465-542X.
  10. 1 2 3 Eleogui, Stella. "Valerie Speirs". medhealth.leeds.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-11-05.
  11. 1 2 "Biobanks A-Z - UKCRC Tissue Directory and Coordination Centre". UKCRC Tissue Directory and Coordination Centre. Retrieved 2018-11-05.
  12. ↑ Thompson, Alastair M.; Clements, Karen; Cheung, Shan; Pinder, Sarah E.; Lawrence, Gill; Sawyer, Elinor; Kearins, Olive; Ball, Graham R.; Tomlinson, Ian (2018). "Management and 5-year outcomes in 9938 women with screen-detected ductal carcinoma in situ: the UK Sloane Project". European Journal of Cancer. 101: 210–219. doi:10.1016/j.ejca.2018.06.027. ISSN   1879-0852. PMID   30092498.
  13. ↑ Sellers, Graham. "Breast Research Group". medhealth.leeds.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-11-05.
  14. ↑ Convention, European Oncology. "Seminars - Oncology Convention". Oncology Convention. Retrieved 2018-11-05.
  15. ↑ Humphries, Matthew P.; Sundara Rajan, Sreekumar; Honarpisheh, Hedieh; Cserni, Gabor; Dent, Jo; Fulford, Laura; Jordan, Lee B.; Jones, J. Louise; Kanthan, Rani (2017-03-28). "Characterisation of male breast cancer: a descriptive biomarker study from a large patient series". Scientific Reports. 7 (1): 45293. doi:10.1038/srep45293. ISSN   2045-2322. PMC   5368596 . PMID   28350011.
  16. ↑ "The rise of male breast cancer". The Telegraph. Retrieved 2018-11-05.
  17. ↑ "Male breast cancer | Nursing in Practice". www.nursinginpractice.com. Retrieved 2018-11-05.
  18. 1 2 "Professor Valerie Speirs | Staff Profile | The Institute of Medical Sciences | The University of Aberdeen". www.abdn.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-11-05.
  19. ↑ Anon (2017). "Scientists collaborate to reduce number of animals needed for research - News - Oncology & Metabolism - The University of Sheffield". sheffield.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-11-05.
  20. ↑ Morrissey, Bethny; Holen, Ingunn; Chelala, Claude; Carter, Phil; Jones, Louise; Blyth, Karen; Speirs, Valerie (2016). "Introducing SEARCHBreast: a virtual resource to facilitate sharing of surplus animal material developed for breast cancer research". NPJ Breast Cancer. 2 (1): 16020. doi:10.1038/npjbcancer.2016.20. ISSN   2374-4677. PMC   5515334 . PMID   28721381.
  21. ↑ "£4.8m funding awarded for smart approaches to reduce animal use in science | NC3Rs". www.nc3rs.org.uk. Retrieved 2018-11-05.
  22. ↑ Speirs, Valerie (2015). "Share surplus animal tissue". Nature . 522 (7555): 156. doi: 10.1038/522156c . ISSN   0028-0836. PMID   26062499.
  23. ↑ "Bradford scientist awarded £90k to investigate link between diabetes and breast cancer - 2018 - University of Bradford". www.bradford.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-11-05.
  24. 1 2 3 "Effect of EDCs on breast density | Breast Cancer UK". www.breastcanceruk.org.uk. Retrieved 2018-11-05.
  25. ↑ "Valerie Speirs | Sci-napse | Academic search engine for paper". Scinapse. Retrieved 2018-11-05.
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