Read more on why the Breast Cancer Research Foundation is proud to support this worldwide effort.
Scientifically reviewed by Priya Malhotra, PhD
The Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) is proud to announce a $1.5 million grant over five years to support Team ATLAS, an ambitious international research collaboration taking on one of cancer science’s most fundamental questions: why do some people remain cancer-free despite age, inherited risk, environmental exposures, or other known risk factors? The grant will support the investigation of breast cancer within this larger scientific inquiry.
Team ATLAS is part of Cancer Grand Challenges, a global research initiative co-founded by Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute in the U.S. Cancer Grand Challenges brings together interdisciplinary teams of scientists from around the world to address some of the most complex and urgent problems in cancer research—questions too large for any one laboratory, institution, or country to solve alone. Team ATLAS will receive $25 million over the course of five years to address the cancer avoidance challenge.
Led by Paul Bastard, MD, PhD, of Institute Imagine in Paris, Team ATLAS is tackling the Cancer Grand Challenges’ cancer avoidance challenge through the lens of the immune system—specifically, the role of antibodies and autoantibodies in cancer resistance. The team is studying whether certain immune patterns may help explain why some people who are thought to be at high risk never develop cancer.
While much of cancer research has traditionally focused on the biological events that cause cancer to develop, ATLAS asks a complementary and potentially transformative question: what protects people from cancer in the first place?
The team will study unique groups of people, including centenarians who have remained cancer-free, individuals with high-risk exposures who have not developed cancer, people with inherited cancer predispositions, and twin pairs in which one twin developed cancer and the other did not.
For BCRF, supporting ATLAS reflects the Foundation’s commitment to advancing bold science that could reshape prevention, early detection, and treatment.
“If we can understand the immune signals, antibodies, or biological mechanisms that appear to protect certain individuals, we may uncover entirely new ways to assess risk, detect disease earlier, and ultimately prevent breast cancer before it starts,” said Dorraya El-Ashry, PhD, BCRF’s Chief Scientific Officer.
Building a Cancer Antibody Atlas
ATLAS stands for Antibody Tracking for Long-term Avoidance and Surveillance. The team’s central goal is to build a Cancer Antibody Atlas: a detailed map of antibody patterns in the blood that may reveal whether antibodies help protect against cancer, contribute to cancer development, or serve as biomarkers of risk and immune response.
Antibodies are proteins made by the immune system to recognize threats. Autoantibodies, which recognize the body’s own molecules, are often thought of in the context of autoimmune disease. But Team ATLAS is exploring a more nuanced possibility: that some autoantibodies may weaken immune protection and allow cancer to grow, while others may help the immune system recognize and eliminate early cancer cells.
The team’s approach builds on pioneering work by Dr. Bastard and Jean-Laurent Casanova, MD, PhD, whose research linked specific autoantibodies to life-threatening COVID-19 by showing that they could block key immune signals needed to fight viral infection. ATLAS is now extending that concept to cancer: could antibodies leave behind a record of immune events that help explain who develops cancer, who avoids it, and why?
“We hope to identify novel mechanisms that protect against cancer or, conversely, that produce an increased cancer risk,” said Dr. Bastard. “Such discoveries could lead to major changes in how we approach cancer prevention and treatment.”
Using advanced antibody profiling technologies, Team ATLAS will search for anti-tumor antibodies, pro-tumor antibodies, and exposure-specific antibodies associated with cancer protection or susceptibility. The team’s long-term aim is to identify immune signatures, biomarkers, and druggable mechanisms that could inform cancer prevention, early detection, and treatment.
As the largest private funder of breast cancer research in the world, BCRF is proud to join this international effort—bringing the tools of immunology, epidemiology, aging research, cancer biology, and technology development to bear on questions that could be especially meaningful for people at elevated risk of breast cancer.
“BCRF’s mission is to fuel the most promising science to prevent and cure breast cancer, and ATLAS represents exactly the kind of ambitious, interdisciplinary work that can move the field forward,” said Dr. El-Ashry. “The question of cancer avoidance is too complex for any one lab or disease area to answer alone. Through Cancer Grand Challenges, ATLAS brings together the scale, expertise, and global collaboration needed to pursue discoveries that could ultimately benefit people at risk of, or affected by, breast cancer.”
A Global Team of Scientists
Team ATLAS brings together scientists and clinicians with expertise in immunology, cancer biology, aging, epidemiology, infectious disease, technology development, multi-omics, and prevention science. The core team includes Paul Bastard, MD, PhD of Institute Imagine; Jean-Laurent Casanova, MD, PhD of The Rockefeller University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Chi Van Dang, MD, PhD of Johns Hopkins University and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research; Xin Lu, PhD of the University of Oxford and Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research; Jacques Fellay, MD, PhD of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne; Tyler Hulett, PhD of CDI Laboratories; Nils Landgren, MD, PhD of Uppsala University; Trine Hyrup Mogensen, MD, PhD of Aarhus University; and Ruth Travis, PhD of the University of Oxford.
What This Could Mean for Breast Cancer
If Team ATLAS can identify immune-based markers of protection or vulnerability, those discoveries could help researchers better understand who is at elevated risk, who may benefit from more intensive screening, and which biological pathways could be targeted to prevent breast cancer from developing or progressing.
“Our hope is that ATLAS will reveal immune-based clues that help explain why some people are naturally protected from cancer, including breast cancer,” said Dr. El-Ashry. “Ultimately, this work could lead to new biomarkers, prevention strategies, and treatment targets that reduce risk and improve outcomes. The promise of ATLAS is not only to deepen our understanding of cancer biology, but to help move us toward a future where we are not only finding breast cancer earlier or treating it more effectively—we are learning how to stop more cancers from developing in the first place.”
Through its support of Team ATLAS, BCRF is helping bring breast cancer research into a bold global effort to understand cancer avoidance at its roots. The answers could redefine how scientists think about cancer risk, immune protection, and the earliest opportunities to intervene.
As the largest private funder of breast cancer research in the world, BCRF continues to push the envelope and stand at the vanguard of innovative solutions to cancer.
Through Cancer Grand Challenges, ATLAS is funded by Cancer Research UK, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, the Susan Wojcicki Foundation, and the Torrey Coast Foundation. Read more about the project in Cell.
