A desire to understand how breast cancer starts has seen Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researcher Dr Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat today win one of three 2010 L’Oreal Australia For Women in Science Fellowships.
Dr Asselin-Labat, a senior postdoctoral fellow in the institute’s Stem Cells and Cancer division in Melbourne, Australia, is rapidly establishing an international profile for her studies of how breast stem cells develop and how these cells are influenced by oestrogen and other steroids.
In March this year she was the first author on a Nature paper revealing that oestrogen and other steroids can control the function of breast stem cells.
“We found out how oestrogen and other steroids can influence mammary stem cells. It’s via an indirect mechanism important in understanding how stem cells proliferate, and it can lead to new treatments for breast cancer,” she said.
Dr Asselin-Labat said she would use the $20,000 L’Oreal Fellowship to fund some technical help in the laboratory and pay her two young sons’ childcare expenses. “The fellowship is a good honour and will help me maintain my work-life balance with my two boys,” Dr Asselin-Labat said. “It will let me employ a laboratory assistant to maintain the team’s productivity, it will help with childcare costs, and will support my participation in leadership training.”
