How the body’s natural defences could be harnessed to design more effective treatments and ultimately a vaccine against breast cancer.
Research projects that are associated with our research theme of Therapies are shown below:
Characterising the Glycan Shield
Dr Oliver Pearce, Barts Cancer Institute, London
Dr. Oliver Pearce aims to identify how breast cancer tumours remodel their surroundings to protect them from attack by the bodies’ own immune system. He hopes to understand how immune cells are deactivated in order to improve the response to immunotherapy in triple negative breast cancer patients.
Exploring Versican as an Immune Barrier in Cancer
Dr Oliver Pearce and Priyanka Hirani, Barts Cancer Institute, London
Following on from the Glycan Shield project, Dr. Oliver Pearce and Priyanka Hirani are investigating how the protein Versican might be involved in deactivating immune cells in the tumour microenvironment.
The Effect of Metformin on Breast Cancer Metabolism
Dr Simon Lord, University of Oxford
As part of ABC’s Junior Research Fellowship programme Dr. Simon Lord aims to understand how the drug metformin affects cancer cell growth and metabolism and whether it might be effective as a new cancer treatment.
BRCA1, BRCA2 and DNA repair mechanisms
Dr Andrew Blackford, University of Oxford
As part of ABC’s Junior Research Fellowship programme Dr. Andrew Blackford aims to understand how BRCA1 and BRCA2 proteins repair DNA and stop tumours forming.
Therapeutic Targeting of Dormant Breast Cancer Cells
Prof Ingunn Holen, University of Sheffield
Prof Ingunn Holen aims to understand how breast cancer cells survive chemotherapy treatment by entering a dormant state and whether these dormant cells regrow to become secondary tumours.