Titles and Affiliations
Professor of Medicine, Division of Hematology-Oncology
Professor, Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences
David Geffen School of Medicine
Director
UCLA Social Genomics Core Laboratory
Research area
Studying the biological pathways that link psychological stress and breast cancer outcomes, with a focus on the nervous and immune systems.
Impact
Patients who have been diagnosed and treated for breast cancer experience many forms of stress including psychological stress which can activate the immune response and cause inflammation—this negatively impacts breast cancer outcomes. Compelling evidence has emerged that indicates that the immune response and inflammation play a role in tumor initiation, progression, and metastatic spread. Drs. Bower and Cole are focusing on the role of the nervous and immune systems in translating stress from brain to body. These studies aim to define new “positive neurobiology” pathways that can be translated into clinical interventions. Through this work, they hope to establish new paradigms for blocking stress in order to promote both the quality and potentially the length of breast cancer survivorship.
Progress Thus Far
Drs. Bower and Cole are conducting several interrelated lines of research into the association between psychosocial stressors and tumor characteristics in women with early-stage breast cancer. This includes examination of neural processes that link chronic stress and inflammatory processes relevant for tumor progression, as well as intervention studies to reduce stress and identify neuroendocrine pathways that impact tumor biology. They established a role for the brain’s reward system in blocking stress-induced changes in tumor biology which led them to develop a laboratory model system to study how to leverage this effect to impact breast cancer growth and metastasis. In other lines of investigation, they demonstrated that an online version of their mindfulness-based intervention is effective in reducing depression, enhancing well-being, and improving tumor-relevant immune processes in younger women with a history of breast cancer. The team developed several other psychological interventions that can be delivered using an established digital platform. They are testing these interventions that target positive psychological states in women who have completed breast cancer treatment and expanded its to more effectively reach a broad and diverse range of women with breast cancer.
What’s next
Drs. Cole and Bower will continue their clinical work to test and expand their digital intervention. In addition, they will continue to evaluate their model of reward system activation and evaluate how activation of the brain’s reward system affects breast cancer growth and metastasis. They are also seeking to quantify the impact of reward system activation on the immune cell population dynamics in breast tumor samples. Both lines of research are designed to establish new parameters for enhancing psychological well-being and blocking the stress effect for breast cancer survivors: Their results have the potential to not only advance new digital health interventions in breast cancer, but also define new “positive neurobiology” pathways that might be tapped in future clinical tools.
Biography
Steven W. Cole, PhD is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology-Oncology at the UCLA School of Medicine. His research maps the molecular pathways by which social and environmental factors influence the activity of human, viral, and tumor genomes. He pioneered the use of functional genomics approaches in social and behavioral research and has mapped the signal transduction pathways by which social factors enhance replication of viruses (e.g., HIV-1 and HHV-8), alter expression of immune response genes (e.g., IL-6 and Interferon-beta), and up-regulate expression of pro-metastatic genes by human breast and ovarian cancer cells. His research uses computational modeling strategies to identify transcription factors that mediate socio-environmental influences on gene expression and genetic polymorphisms that modify those effects to create Gene x Environment interactions. Dr. Cole is member of the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Norman Cousins Center, the UCLA Molecular Biology Institute, and the NCI Network on Biobehavioral Pathways in Cancer, and he holds a joint appointment in UCLA’s Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences.
