Jerrica Breindel, PhD

NIH TEACRS Fellow

Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease that encompasses multiple subtypes, which differ in their molecular profiles, clinical course of progression, and response to therapeutics. Similarities between breast cancer subtypes and epithelial cell lineages found in the normal breast suggest that determining the identity and activity of normal breast cells could lead to a better understanding of both mammary cell biology and breast cancer. My research focuses on characterizing and classifying cellular subsets within epithelial cell lineages of the normal mammary gland to better understand the hierarchy of development from stem/progenitor to mature mammary epithelial cells and how disruption of this hierarchy could lead to breast cancer.