How much is a study of breast cancer tumors and treatment worth? About $2 million.

Michael Ihnat, pharmacy professor at OU Heath Sciences Center, and his company DormaTarg, which has a partnership with the university, are recipients of a National Institutes of Health grant to study dormant breast cancer tumors.

“Dormant sounds like a good thing, but the problem with that is they reactivate,” Ihnat said. “When they reactivate, unfortunately, they’re impossible to treat by normal means. ... They become resistant to conventional drugs used to treat cancers.”

Prior study of this type of tumor was challenging because there was no animal model researchers could use, Ihnat said.

In 2009, his lab developed an animal model and a possible drug targeting the tumors, and this grant will develop the model and study how the drug works.

Once the group finishes developing the model, other researchers will be able to use it to study dormant tumors as well, Ihnat said.

So far, researchers have an idea of a protein the drug targets to block processes that lead to cellular development, but they are not sure yet, Ihnat said.

About 230,000 new cases of breast cancer occur every year, and there are about 2.5 million breast cancer survivors, according to the American Cancer Society. Many appear to go into remission after treatment but later experience an aggressive reoccurrence.

“Hopefully, most will never have reoccurrence, but unfortunately, in some aggressive forms, almost 80 percent reoccur in other spots or the same spot,” Ihnat said. “Again, the problem is this: It’s a very different tumor than it was before, so it’s almost untreatable.”

Numbers vary on how many forms of breast cancer are the dormant, possibly reoccurring type, Ihnat said. Some say 10 percent, and others say 80 percent, but much of it depends on the life span of the person and length of remission.

Ihnat said he understands the importance of studying this type of tumor, as did the National Cancer Institute.

“It was reviewed by the head of the NCI, a Nobel Prize winner, who liked the idea so much he helped the committee to get it funded,” Ihnat said. “It’s super cool. The committee suggested we develop drugs and step back and really look at mechanism and how they become dormant and reactivate. If we can keep them dormant, it’s not a problem.”

Ihnat has been researching cancer drug development for about 20 years. In 2006, he founded DormaTarg with two colleagues to further the research.

The company has three drugs with patents pending and has received numerous research grants since 2006 to develop them, according to the company website.

“DormaTarg has a partnership with the OU Health Sciences Center with respect to intellectual property and rights to compounds,” Ihnat said. “It is as much the university as it is DormaTarg.”

AT A GLANCE

Grant’s goals

$1.9 million over two years to study:

— how effective the drug, DT-320, is at treating tumors

— how to make the drug more effective to treat breast cancers

— what happens to the drug once it is inside live models

— how the drug kills tumors

Source: National Institutes of Health project information