Grant: Project Grant

Breast cancer is a major cause of death worldwide and there is an urgent need to improve patient treatments. The type of treatments that are currently used depend upon the specific type of breast cancer and its stage. Triple negative breast cancer that is locally advanced but metastases are not yet detected is an important sub-type. It is normally treated with chemotherapy and immunotherapy (boosts the body's immune system to fight the tumour) followed by surgical removal of the tumor, if possible. While this is effective in many patients, in some it is not as the cancer return, metastasize and result in mortality. In this research will investigate the use of 'focused ultrasound' (FUS) to improve the treatments of these patients. Our past research has shown that a certain type of FUS, one that uses circulating small bubbles, can help improve the body's immune response and through that improve conventional treatments. The overall goal of the present research is to investigate and develop this approach for breast cancer patients. This will involve first carrying out preclinical work to gain important new understanding of mechanisms using advanced tissue analysis. Then sophisticated preclinical models will be used to examine and refine approaches to combining with current chemoimmunotherapy treatments. Finally we will conduct a small clinical study to refine the approach and develop evidence that can by used as a basis for undertaking larger scale future clinical work.