Alexander Swarbrick, PhD

Decoding breast cancer cellular microenvironments to discover new biomarkers and treatments for aggressive disease.

Impact

Despite the availability of numerous new treatments for breast cancer, many patients experience clinical recurrence, caused by acquired or innate resistance of their cancer to treatment. Dr. Swarbrick’s work aims to identify patients at high risk of recurrence and discover the cellular mechanisms responsible for drug resistance by investigating the behavior of different cancer cells within a tumor and the other cells immediately surrounding it (microenvironment). He and his team are using new, advanced technologies to study gene activity in individual cells and visualize their location within the tumor.

Progress Thus Far

Dr. Swarbrick and his team have collected a large amount of detailed molecular information from patient samples to monitor how the tumors and their microenvironment change during treatment and if any biomarkers can predict better outcomes. They have developed a way to classify cancer cells and created laboratory models to examine how the tumor and its microenvironment respond to specific treatments. The researchers are also investigating the role of specific immune cells and tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS), formations that develop in inflamed tissues and facilitate the influx of immune cells to the tumor site.

What’s next

In the next year, the team will analyze the complex data collected from patients and laboratory models. A key focus will be on how immune and structural cells change during treatment and affect how tumors respond. They’ll also investigate if tumors have multiple different types of microenvironments and how that may change with treatment. Lastly, they will finish analyzing how the TLS are built and function in model systems of breast cancer. They will use their advanced techniques to examine if specific immune cells multiply within these structures, which could lead to new antibody therapies.

“If not for BCRF, my research could not quickly adapt to new technologies and ideas in our search for better breast cancer treatments.”