Grant: Project Grant

Harnessing the body's own immune system to fight cancer is one of the most promising advances in modern medicine. However, there are few reliable treatments that boost the immune system's ability to eliminate cancer cells. In breast cancer, this need is urgent: it is among the most common cancers and aggressive subtypes, such as triple negative breast cancer, often lack targeted options and recur after treatment. Many breast tumors also create an environment that keeps immune cells out or shuts them down, which limits the impact of immune-based therapies. Our research focuses on a class of medicines called SMAC mimetics, which block proteins that help breast cancer cells survive. These medicines not only weaken cancer cells but also help the immune system find and attack cancer cells. Research shows that SMAC mimetics can strengthen immune responses against cancer and virus-infected cells, while selectively targeting tumors and sparing healthy tissue. This makes them attractive candidates for hard-to-treat breast cancer. In this project, we will explore how SMAC mimetics affect immune cells in breast tumors and test whether they can improve the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy. First, we will study how SMAC mimetics change the breast cancer environment to make it more receptive to immune attack. Second, we will test whether SMAC mimetics can help expand immune cells from patient tumors for use in personalized therapies. Finally, we will determine whether SMAC mimetics can boost the ability of these immune cells to kill cancer cells in the body. Our ultimate goal is to create new combination strategies that empower the immune system to detect and destroy breast cancer more effectively, offering new hope for patients with hard-to-treat tumors such as triple-negative breast cancer.