Publications by Fabio De Martino

Using deep learning-based approaches to characterise ageing in different tissue components of normal breast tissue of women with different risk of developing breast cancer

Wiley2023

Estrogen receptor positive breast cancers have patient specific hormone sensitivities and rely on progesterone receptor

Cathrin Brisken, Giovanna Ambrosini, Ayyakkannu Ayyanan, Laura Battista, Valentina Scabia, Fabio De Martino, Csaba Ferenc László, Andrea Agnoletto

Estrogen and progesterone receptor (ER, PR) signaling control breast development and impinge on breast carcinogenesis. ER is an established driver of ER + disease but the role of the PR, itself an ER target gene, is debated. We assess the issue in clinical ...

Nature Portfolio2022

Role of the androgen receptor in the human breast epithelium

Fabio De Martino

Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women worldwide and understanding the risk factors affecting it is key for prevention. The relative risk of developing breast cancer is related to exposure to both endogenous hormones and exogenous natural and ...

EPFL2022

Epithelial-mesenchymal plasticity determines estrogen receptor positive breast cancer dormancy and epithelial reconversion drives recurrence

Cathrin Brisken, Giovanna Ambrosini, Georgios Sflomos, Yueyun Zhang, Hazel Margaret Quinn, Fabio De Martino, Patrik Aouad, Céline Marie Victoria Stibolt, Kelly Spry Maggs

More than 70% of human breast cancers (BCs) are estrogen receptor α-positive (ER+). A clinical challenge of ER+ BC is that they can recur decades after initial treatments. Mechanisms governing latent disease remain elusive due to lack of adequate in vivo m ...

Nature Research2022

Intraductal xenografts show lobular carcinoma cells rely on their own extracellular matrix and LOXL1

Cathrin Brisken, Giovanna Ambrosini, Ayyakkannu Ayyanan, Georgios Sflomos, Laura Battista, Philipp Bucher, Valentina Scabia, Maryse Fiche, Fabio De Martino, Patrik Aouad

Invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) is the most frequent special histological subtype of breast cancer, typically characterized by loss of E‐cadherin. It has clinical features distinct from other estrogen receptor‐positive (ER+) breast cancers but the molecul ...

2021

Deep Learning Enables Individual Xenograft Cell Classification in Histological Images by Analysis of Contextual Features

Michaël Unser, Cathrin Brisken, Daniel Sage, Olivier Burri, Quentin Juppet, Fabio De Martino, Martin Weigert

Patient-Derived Xenografts (PDXs) are the preclinical models which best recapitulate inter- and intra-patient complexity of human breast malignancies, and are also emerging as useful tools to study the normal breast epithelium. However, data analysis gener ...

2021

Contraceptive progestins with androgenic properties stimulate breast epithelial cell proliferation

Cathrin Brisken, Giovanna Ambrosini, Laura Battista, Philipp Bucher, Valentina Scabia, Fabio De Martino, Marie Shamseddin, Céline Berthe Constantin, Csaba Ferenc László

Hormonal contraception exposes women to synthetic progesterone receptor (PR) agonists, progestins, and transiently increases breast cancer risk. How progesterone and progestins affect the breast epithelium is poorly understood because we lack adequate mode ...

2021

Variably Scaled Kernels Improve Classification of Hormonally-Treated Patient-Derived Xenografts

Cathrin Brisken, Fabio De Martino, Marie Shamseddin, Francesco Marchetti

Little is known about the biological functions which are exerted by hormone receptors in physiological conditions. Here, we made use of the Mouse INtraDuctal (MIND) model, an innovative patient-derived xenograft (PDX) model, to characterize global gene exp ...

IEEE2020

A high resolution LC-MS targeted method for the concomitant analysis of 11 contraceptive progestins and 4 steroids

Cathrin Brisken, Marc Moniatte, Fabio De Martino, Jonathan Paz Montoya, Marie Shamseddin, Csaba Ferenc László, Alexandre Béguin

In the context of hormonal contraception and hormone replacement therapy (HRT), many women are exposed to exogenous hormones. Current use of hormonal contraception with combined ethinyl estradiol and different progestins bestows a breast cancer relative ri ...

2019