Grant: Project Grant

Breast cancer is the most common cancer type and is the leading cause of female mortality worldwide. Unfortunately, the incidence of breast cancer is still increasing in North America. The use of immunotherapy that reinvigorates the immune system against cancer has witnessed an unprecedented revolution in cancer treatment. There is tremendous interest in using immunotherapy to treat breast cancer. However, breast cancer patients do not respond well to such treatments. Therefore, there is an urgent need to better understand how the immune system fights breast cancer in particular in the tumor microenvironment. We have found that immature red blood cells are expanded in the blood of breast cancer patients and also in their tumors. These cells suppress the immune system against cancer and at the same time secrete a protein that binds to the breast tumors and expands them. We have shown that tumor spread can be prevented by stopping the interaction of this protein with the cancer cells. Therefore, this project will allow us to better understand how these immature red blood cells affect tumor progression and how this can be prevented. We believe our novel approach will answer some fundamental questions in the breast cancer field and assist us to develop a novel immunotherapy approach to prevent breast cancer metastasis. Alternatively, this knowledge can be applied to other cancers.