Jean J. Latimer, Ph.D., is director of the NSU AutoNation Institute for Breast Cancer Research and Care and an associate professor and cancer research scientist at NSU’s College of Pharmacy.

 

Latimer oversees the institute’s focus on advancing research for the development of new methods for the prevention and treatments of cancer.

 

At NSU, Latimer leads a team that investigates human breast tissue for DNA damage that originates from environmental causes. She has developed a unique method of growing cells from normal breast tissue and tumors at early stages of the disease, enabling further studies into the causes of breast cancer and indicating what type of treatment would provide the best response. Her research interests include DNA repair, stem cells, breast tissue engineering, breast cancer etiology, leukemia recurrence, genomic instability, mutation, precocial breast development, environmental causes of cancer, and other areas.

 

My laboratory has developed a number of important in vitro models related to the human breast and breast cancer. My background in developmental biology and murine embryonic stem cells has allowed my laboratory to establish a tissue engineering system that involves multiple autologous cell types from the non-diseased breast. We have established 48/48 reduction mammoplasty extended explants,12 of which are from African American patients. This system culminates in an organotypic breast epithelial/myoepithelial ductal system in vitro, after one month, over a field of stromal fibroblasts. We utilize a rich serum-containing medium based upon embryonic stem cell culture called MWRI. Tumors can also be placed into the same system although we perform this without any stromal contamination. Tumors do not form normal ductal architecture in this system but we have a successfully created over 55 human breast tumor cell explants (<13 passage) and cell lines (>13 passages) from tumors of stages 0-IV at an 85% success rate. Thirteen triple negative tumors have been successfully cultured as explants from European white and African American patients. We published a landmark paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science involving 19 stage I tumors as primary explants and loss of functional DNA repair. Both types of cultures (non diseased and malignant) contain stem cell populations shown in a paper published in Stem Cells. Our goal is to use these tumor cultures for drug development and discovery. Our goal for the non-diseased breast cultures is to use them as a model system for environmental chemical assessment.