Rebecca Aft
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Medicine & Clinical Research
Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive form of breast cancer, and many patients later develop cancer that has spread to distant organs. Some tumor cells leave the breast early and hide in the bone marrow.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Microbiology & Immunology
Genetics
- Topics
triple negative breast cancer
metastasis
disseminated tumor cells
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Evaluate whether an 8-gene bone marrow test for disseminated tumor cells predicts distant metastasis in TNBC patients treated with carboplatin, paclitaxel and nivolumab, with or without cabiralizumab, in a phase II trial.
- Identify which subpopulations of disseminated tumor cells in the bone marrow of TNBC patients resist conventional chemotherapy or immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy, and how they vary within and between patients.
- Determine how specific T cell and conventional dendritic cell populations in the bone marrow change when tumor cells are present, and how chemotherapy and checkpoint immunotherapy affect them.
More about the research
These disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) may be the link between the original tumor and later spread. The immune environment of the bone marrow may influence whether these cells stay dormant, resist treatment or grow into new tumors. The challenge is to predict which patients carry dangerous DTCs and which ones would benefit from stronger immunotherapy.
Why it matters
Patients with triple negative breast cancer could benefit from bone marrow biomarkers that predict who is likely to relapse and who would gain the most from immune checkpoint therapy. Such biomarkers could help doctors choose between conventional chemotherapy and more aggressive immunotherapy to prevent cancer from spreading.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Mostafa Yazdi
Missouri University of Science and Technology, MO·Biomedical Engineering·Early-career
Evaluate the anti-tumor activity of the Tumor-derived Cell-membrane Coated NanoVaccine (TCC-NV), adjuvant-loaded particles wrapped in tumor cell membranes, in immune-competent mouse models of triple-negative breast cancer.
Shiaw-Yih Lin
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether scarce DNA building blocks (dNTPs) cause RNA to be misinserted into TNBC genomes, and whether blocking RNase H2 leaves these errors in place, causing lethal replication stress. Also identify how tumors resist the inhibitor.
Ramesh Ganju
Ohio State University, OH·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how S100A7 signaling controls genes that respond to interferon-gamma, especially PD-L1 and Fas, in African American TNBC cells and in engineered mice that overproduce mouse S100a7.
The school
Washington University in St Louis: 97 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 365 research doctorates a year.
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