Ana receives an AACR Trailblazer grant

Ana is one of the first recipients of the bold new $1 million AACR Trailblazer Cancer Research Grants, and her project will advance our understanding of how conversations between the nervous and immune systems control when cancer returns.

The competitive AACR Trailblazer call by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) supports meritorious and promising cancer researchers and their groundbreaking ideas over three years. This historic $15 million investment in partnership with Pfizer is intended to provide investigators with the resources and time to establish innovative, emerging research projects. By funding paradigm-shifting research, these grants aim to advance the understanding of cancer biology, drive groundbreaking translational science, and improve patient outcomes. Our awarded project, Neuro-immune regulation of metastatic breast cancer dormancy, will elucidate how long-range communication between the nervous and immune systems controls the formation of tissue-specific metastases.

The project will focus on the liver, one of the most common and deadly sites of breast cancer metastasis. By combining expertise in cancer biology, immunology, neuroscience and computational analysis, we will study how disseminated cancer cells interact with their new environment using unique mouse models, human samples and advanced technologies that examine tissues cell by cell and map where different signals occur within their native context. The goal is to understand how neuro-immune communication puts cancer to sleep, and why it breaks down in a way that allows cancer to reawaken. Ultimately, this work will lay the foundation for neuro-modulatory immunotherapies that effectively prevent metastasis and improve outcomes for patients with breast cancer.

Read more about the project here and all the awardees here.