Breadcrumb

null Richard Kremer, MD, PhD

Senior Scientist, RI-MUHC, Glen site

Metabolic Disorders and Complications Program

Centre for Translational Biology

Professor, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University

Department of Medicine, Division of Biochemistry, MUHC

 

Keywords

vitamin D • parathyroid hormone related peptide (PTHrP) • breast cancer • skeletal metastasis • circulating tumour cells • genetically engineered mouse models • tumour progression • metabolic bone disorders • translational studies

Research Focus

My research focuses on the role of calcium-regulating hormones in health and disease and has three main research programs. The first research program aims to elucidate how 1, 25-dihydroxyvitamin D3, the active form of vitamin D, influences cell growth and differentiation in the skeleton and in cancer cells. I discovered that a lack of vitamin D results in fat accumulation in bone and muscle and leads to the accelerated development of breast cancer. An extension of these studies is to expand new therapeutic strategies with vitamin D derivatives in osteoporosis and in cancer. The second research program aims to establish the role of the parathyroid hormone-related protein (PTHrP) in tumour initiation, growth, and metastasis. This has led to developing a novel patented targeted therapy against breast and pancreatic cancer using monoclonal antibodies raised against PTHrP. The third and most recent research program aims to elucidate the role of circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in cancer progression and to identify specific markers of skeletal metastasis in breast and prostate cancer through liquid biopsy. A patented method was developed to obtain large amounts of CTCs, enabling in-depth characterization.

Selected Publications

Click on Pubmed to see my current publications list

  • Kremer R, Campbell PP, Reinhardt T, Gilsanz V. Vitamin D status and its relationship to body fat, final height, and peak bone mass in young women. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2009 Jan;94(1):67-73. doi: 10.1210/jc.2008-1575. Epub 2008 Nov 4. PMID: 18984659.

  • Li J, Karaplis AC, Huang DC, Siegel PM, Camirand A, Yang XF, Muller WJ, Kremer R. PTHrP drives breast tumor initiation, progression, and metastasis in mice and is a potential therapy target. J Clin Invest. 2011 Dec;121(12):4655-69. doi: 10.1172/JCI46134. Epub 2011 Nov 7. PMID: 22056386.

  • Kremer R, Gagnon B, Meguerditchian AN, Nadeau L, Mayo N. Effect of oral bisphosphonates for osteoporosis on development of skeletal metastases in women with breast cancer: results from a pharmaco-epidemiological study. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2014 Oct 2;106(11). pii: dju264. doi: 10.1093/jnci/dju264. Print 2014 Nov. PMID: 25278509.

  • Assaker G, Camirand A, Abdulkarim B, Omeroglu A, Deschenes J, Joseph K, Noman ASM, Ramana Kumar AV, Kremer R, Sabri S. PTHrP, A Biomarker for CNS Metastasis in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer and Selection for Adjuvant Chemotherapy in Node-Negative Disease. JNCI Cancer Spectr. 2019 Aug 29;4(1): pkz063. PMID: 32296756.

  • Li J, Luco AL, Camirand A, St-Arnaud R, Kremer R. Vitamin D Regulates CXCL12/CXCR4 and Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition in a Model of Breast Cancer Metastasis to Lung. Endocrinology. 2021 Jul 1;162(7):bqab049. PMID: 33693593.