UPCI | Jean J Latimer

Overview

Jean J. Latimer, PhD. is an Assistant Professor in the School of Medicine, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Women's Health. She is a member of the graduate faculty of the Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry Program and the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. Her research laboratory is located at Hillman Cancer Center. Dr. Latimer's laboratory specializes in DNA repair deficiency as a causative factor in breast carcinogenesis.

Dr. Latimer's laboratory has developed a multiple-lineage tissue engineering system for primary culture of Human Mammary Epithelial Cells (HMEC). There are three unique features of this system: it has a success rate of 100% at establishing primary cultures from reduction mammoplasties; it produces unusually long-lived cultures (3 months or longer), and these cultures progressively undergo ductal, if not lobular, differentiation in vitro, effectively reiterating in vivo organogenesis. One of the key factors in the timeline for differentiation in vitro is race with African American breast tissue differentiating 11 days earlier than white breast tissue in this system. Dr. Latimer has also used this methodology to culture breast tumors as well as non-diseased tissue with a success rate of 85%. In these studies her laboratory measured DNA repair capacity as an etiological factor in breast tumorigenesis. She has shown that all early stage tumors show a significant loss of NER compared to non-diseased breast reduction mammoplasty cultures.

Additional links

Dr. Latimer’s faculty page at the University of Pittsburgh Cellular and Molecular Pathology Graduate Program – http://path.upmc.edu/cmp/fac57.htm

Dr. Latimer's faculty page at the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine – http://www.mirm.pitt.edu/people/bios/Latimer1.htm